Way, St Giles in the Wood

Way is a historic estate in the parish of St Giles in the Wood, Devon. It is situated about 2 miles north-east of the village of St Giles in the Wood and about 4 miles north-east of the town of Great Torrington. It was described by Hoskins (1959) as "the fons et origo of the mighty tribe of Pollard" and had been acquired by them from the de la Way family at some time before 1242. One of the earliest members descended from this family to reach national prominence was Sir Lewis Pollard (c. 1465-1526), Justice of the Common Pleas, of Kings Nympton. The former mansion of the Pollards at Way is now represented by the farmhouse known as Way Barton. Reset into the front wall of the house is a stone sculpture dated about 1300 showing the faces of two ladies wearing wimples and above them the smaller face of a man. In 1309 Robert Pollard was granted by the Bishop of Exeter licence to build an oratory at Weye, of which no trace remains in the present house.

The Devon historian Tristram Risdon (died 1640) (who lived at Winscott in the same parish of St Giles in the Wood) stated Way to have been the residence of the de la Way family during the reign of King John (1199-1216), and to have been granted, during the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), by Walter de la Way, the son of William de la Way, to Walter Pollard, which grant was witnessed by Sir Henry Sully and Sir Thomas Merton.

The arms of de la Way were later quartered by their descendants the Pollard family and by the Davie family (later Davie Baronets of Creedy, Sandford). The usual explanation of this usage of the de la Way arms is as given for example in the 1771 Baronetage of England, by Kimber and Johnson:

The family of Davie of Creedy is said by the Devon topographer Rev. Swete (died 1821) to have derived from the family of de Way (Latinised to de Via, of which "Davie" is said to be a corrupted form) of the manor of Way in the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington, Devon. The family of Pollard inherited (or purchased) the manor of Way, which became their fons et origo, and according to Prince, (died 1723) adopted these "de Way"/Davie arms which thenceforth they used either alone or quartered by their own arms of Argent, a chevron sable between three escallops gules. The Pollard family inherited the manor of Horwood from the Cornu family and these de Way mullet arms are visible on their own, without the Pollard escallop arms, on several 17th-century Pollard monuments in Horwood Church.

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