Tristram Risdon

Tristram Risdon (c. 1580 – 1640) was an English antiquarian and topographer, and the author of Survey of the County of Devon. He was able to devote most of his life to writing this work. After he completed it in about 1632 it circulated around interested people in several manuscript copies for almost 80 years before it was first published by Curll in a very inferior form. A full version was not published until 1811. Risdon also collected information about genealogy and heraldry in a note-book; this was edited and published in 1897.

Risdon was born at Winscott, in the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington in Devon, England. He was the eldest son of William Risdon (d.1622) and his wife Joan (née Pollard). William was the younger son of Giles Risdon (1494-1583) of Bableigh, in the parish of Parkham, where Tristram Risdon stated that the family had been seated since before 1274. Risdon also stated that the family originated in Gloucestershire, where during the reign of King Richard I (1189-1199) they were lords of the manor of Risdon.

After a local education, Tristram Risdon studied either at Broadgates Hall or at Exeter College in Oxford, though he left the university without taking any degree. This was supposedly because of the death of his half-sister, Thomazin Barry, upon which he inherited the family estate at Winscott, which required his personal attention.

He married Pascoe Chafe, the daughter of Thomas Chafe of Exeter, on 2 December 1608 and they had four sons and three daughters. From about 1605 to the 1630s he devoted his time to the study of antiquities, especially those of Devon, and the result of his labours was his Survey of the County of Devon. He died at Winscott in 1640 and was interred in St Giles's church; his mother (died 1610) is commemorated by a monumental brass in the same church.

According to John Prince, who had used the Survey as a source for his Worthies of Devon, Risdon started work on the Survey in 1605 and completed it in 1630. Internal evidence shows, however, that it was not completed until 1632 at the earliest.

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