Edge, Branscombe

Edge, (originally, Egge), is an ancient and historic house in the parish of Branscombe, Devon.

Today called Edge Barton Manor, the surviving house is grade II* listed and sits on the steep south-facing side of a wooded valley, or combe.

Never in origin a manor house, Edge was one of the first stone-built houses in Branescombe on a villein holding called La Regge.

Constructed from the local Beer stone, it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in England.

The existing building is U-shaped, and may originally have been built around the courtyard. Only a short section survives of the original dry moat.

An early circular stone staircase tower is contained within the angle of the north wing so as to give access to a second floor, newly created by the addition of a raised ceiling to the great hall.

The stone of an upstairs window shows ancient graffiti-incised drawings of sailing ships, thought to represent those of the Spanish Armada, becalmed offshore near Branscombe in 1588.

A Chapel, attached to the house, dates from the end of the thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

Perhaps built by Walter Branscombe, Bishop of Exeter from 1258 to 1280, it occupied the present south wing, where a large rose window containing four cusped trefoils originally set within the outer gable of the west wall survives on what is now an internal wall, hidden behind a later chimney stack in the attic.

Samuel Lysons in 1822, described the chapel as being in a poor state of repair, and desecrated. An ancient stone piscina has also survived, reset into a wall in the hall.

Historically the manor of Branscombe belonged to the See of Exeter, but during the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377), the estate of Edge was acquired by the de Wadham family, who held it for eight generations until, in 1618, on the death of Dorothy Wadham, widow of Nicholas Wadham, co-founders of Wadham College, Oxford, it passed with Nicholas's other possessions to the heirs general of his father, his nieces and their descendants. The descent of the Wadham family of Edge given by Sir William Pole (1561-1635) is as follows:

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