Woolleigh, Beaford

Woolleigh (anciently Woolley, Wollegh, etc.) is an historic estate in the parish of Beaford, Devon. The surviving mansion house known as Woolleigh Barton, situated 1 3/4 miles north-west of the parish church of Beaford, is a grade II* listed building, long used as a farmhouse. It incorporates remains of a "very fine example of a late Medieval manor house" and retains a "very rich" 15th century wagon roof, a garderobe with the original door, and an attached private chapel with a 17th-century roof.

The private Chapel attached to the mansion house was dedicated to St Mary. The earliest surviving record of it is in the registers of the Bishops of Exeter for 1321 when it was licensed to Master William de Wolleghe, Rector of Yarnscombe. He was permitted by the licence to say mass therein but was forbidden from administering the sacraments there and was obliged to attend the parish church on Sundays and Feast Days. Mention of it is made later in the registers of Bishop Stafford in 1400 and of Bishop Lacy in 1426, in which latter year a licence was granted to John and Elizabeth Haache (i.e. Hatch) who at the same time were also licensed for their private chapel of St Andrew at Hele (now Great Hele Barton) in South Molton.

Uluelie (Woolleigh) is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the 41st of the 176 Devonshire holdings of Baldwin de Moels (died 1090), Sheriff of Devon, feudal baron of Okehampton, one of the Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief of William the Conqueror. His tenant was Colwin. Before the Norman Conquest of 1066 it had been held by the Anglo-Saxon Alsi. Woolleigh was thus a member of the feudal barony of Okehampton, whose later barons were the Courtenay Earls of Devon of Tiverton Castle. The descent of Woolleigh was as follows:

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