Yeotown, Goodleigh

Yeotown was a historic estate situated in the parish of Goodleigh, North Devon, about 1 1/2 miles north-east of the historic centre of Barnstaple. The mansion house was remodelled in about 1807 in the neo-gothic style by Robert Newton Incledon (1761-1846), eldest son of Benjamin Incledon (1730-1796) of Pilton House, Pilton, near Barnstaple, an antiquarian and genealogist and Recorder of the Borough of Barnstaple (1758–1796). It was demolished during his lifetime and today only one of the large gatehouse survives, since converted into a farmhouse known as Ivy Lodge. The surviving drawing of the house in the collection of the North Devon Athaneum in Barnstaple shows a large chapel, or small church, with a tall square three-storied pinnacled tower (presumably as is conventional at the west end) attached to the house.

The mansion house was situated in the sequestered wooded valley of the small River Yeo, about 1 mile south-west of the village of Goodleigh. Near to what Gribble (1830) called "Yeotown Lodge" (now Ivy Lodge) on the road from Goodleigh to Barnstaple is situated the stone marker of the eastern boundary of the parish of Barnstaple.

The earliest recorded owners of the estate were the Beavis family

Robert Newton Incledon (1761-1846), eldest son of Benjamin Incledon (1730-1796) of Pilton House, Pilton, near Barnstaple, an antiquarian and genealogist and Recorder of the Borough of Barnstaple (1758–1796). In 1797 married Elizabeth Beavis (d.1809), the adopted daughter of Col. Henry Beavis of Yeotown. In 1806 Robert sold Pilton House to James Whyte and in 1807 was resident at Yeotown House, the mansion house on his wife's family estate of Yeotown, which he "new fronted in the Gothic style" to his own design. Robert purchased from the Rashleigh family the manor of Goodleigh, and thus Yeotown became the manor house of Goodleigh. For reason unknown the mansion was demolished during the lifetime of Robert Newton Incledon (d.1845), who died aged 84 at his residence in Ilfracombe. The large ledger stone of Robert and his wife Elizabeth Beavis survives in the south aisle of the chancel of Pilton Church, inscribed as follows:

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