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Advice for travelling around non tourist areas of Devon and Cornwall for family research

Posted by (Edmonton Alberta Canada) on

Hi Everyone,
As part of a larger England and Wales trip, I'm focusing on several very small town ancestral places in Devon and Cornwall that are mostly off the regular tourist routes, and am wondering if anyone is familiar with these areas (listed below) and has any thoughts on transportation or approaches and/or insights into to seeing them.

I mostly plan to walk around each small town and maybe visit the cemetary to take a picture of the headstones.Probably best to rent a car, but I hesitate due to the (what to me) is shockingly high price to rent/hire a car. The insurance addons basically double the price (I have low tier credit cards that don't offer insurance on car rentals). Bus maybe? a few cabs perhaps? With around 5 or so towns within 10 miles or so of each other maybe a bus that runs once a day or cabs would be too much trouble? (Towns are Winkleigh, Chulmleigh, Coldridge, Iddesleigh and my grandfather's town of Hatherleigh, just north of Dartmoor. (He joined the British Army in the middle of WW1 at age 18 and after the war in 1920 left to farm in Western Canada).

His wife, my Grandmother, was from Cornwall. I have found references to Wadebrige, Bodmin, and St. Columb (can't find info on whether Major or Minor for St. Columb).

So putting all these small towns together, have I answered my own question that despite the (in my opinion) high cost of car rental/hire, it would be too much hassle to try to bus it around these areas with occasional cabs?

Posted by
2212 posts

Bus services may not be that frequent, so you could end up wasting a lot of time waiting for the next bus... You will be able to cover a lot more ground if you have a car.

Posted by
658 posts

Most of these are small villages, not towns, so they’re not going to just have a cab sitting there ready to pick up whenever you need it. You’d be waiting a long time between each place just to get to the next one.

Definitely renting a car would make things so much easier.

Posted by
7388 posts

Coldridge and Iddesleigh have no useable bus service. The others have service, but not between each other so you would end up backtracking to and from Exeter.

Without wanting to sound pedantic have you established whether each has a Churchyard and/or a Civil Cemetery. Very often a Churchyard will have been closed when it became full and been replaced with a Civil Cemetery. Have you established from a site like Find a Grave if there are gravestones to find.

The two County archives may have transcriptions and/or graveyard/cemetery plans to assist you and save a lot of time searching randomly for gravestones.

If you have found reference to plain St Columb then that means St Columb Major- that is a case in point- a big sprawling Churchyard and a huge Civil Cemetery at the other end of town- near the Cattle Market. You really wouldn't want to randomly wander round either- a huge waste of time. I have actually tried to cover that cemetery, and well didn't achieve much in the time available, with no plan at my disposal (poor planning by me). SCM is the only one of these with a half respectable bus service.
At SCM you get off the bus at the Cattle Market as there is no stop in the town centre due to narrow streets. (either the Truro to Wadebridge or the Truro to Newquay service).

Posted by
468 posts

In 2001, my family went to Cornwall to locate ancestral graves (Budock Water) and a few homesites. Prior to our trip, I connected with the family history site in Truro. They provided information about believed homesites as well as which church had some family graves. (That info is probably all online, now.) We tromped all over the graveyard (half was in tall grass). We were ready to give up when I decided to take a photo lining up some trees and tombstones. When I zoomed in, I spoted the two graves I was looking for! I later connected with a distant (~4th?) cousin who had signed the church's guestbook. Our connection was later verified when he showed up in my dna match list.

Cornwall was my husband's first experience driving in the UK. We rented the car in Truro. He's since driven about 4000 miles in UK and Ireland.

I hope you have a wonderful trip. We try to have an ancestral connection to at least one location in our trips.

Posted by
87 posts

Thanks everyone for all your excellent insight and advice. It's very helpful.
And thank you "isn31c" for your advice about the church yards and county archives and find a grave. Very helpful information and ideas.

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