A royal manor, forming part of the Duchy of Cornwall in 1607. Also known as Hampton Week. A survey exists for that year in Devon Record Office (DRO Z17/1/15), which lists the tenements within the manor as Whiddon, Westcott, Ford, Thorn in Aiston (N Bovey) including one meadow called Broadmead, Shute, a close called Whiteaberry, Little Week, Broad Week, Middlecott, Ellam, Meacombe (Mines), Horslake, Clarkes Parkes, Drewston (Threwston), Greenawell, Coombe Park, Clacombe, Sloncombe (Slankcombe), which fall collectively across the borders of the parishes of Chagford, Moretonhampstead and North Bovey. It gives details of a number of tenants in Sloncombe, with lands amounting to about 250 acres.
The tenants are: ‘John Cornish is seized of three tenements in Slankcombe containing ninety acres of thereabouts… and the moiety of another tenement in Slankcombe of fifteen acres that Philip Cornish and Leonard Cornish before held…’ Other tenants included John Steer (one tenement and a half, comprising 45 acres), Thomas Hill (one tenement and a half, comprising 45 acres), William Hill (half a tenement, 15 acres, inherited from his father John HIll), Richard Cornish (one tenement, 30 acres, inherited from his father Robert), Richard Wannell (2 acres, inherited from his father John Wannell).
This is practically the whole part of South Teign that falls in the parish of Moreton. The part of Whiddon that falls in the parish of Moreton also was part of South Teign manor. Judging from a deed in Devon Record Office (4930 B/T/M/175, dated 1668), Langhill Moor and Langhill Meadow then fell into Sloncombe, along with the Bughead and Bughead Moor; whether these were parts of the manor of South Teign, however, is not made clear. The manor still existed in some residual form in 1917. In that year there was an ‘apportionment of yearly manorial rent of 11s 51⁄2 d issuing out of great Sloncombe and Waterleat Piece in the manor of South Teign alias Hampton Week, with the intent that the manorial rent shall cease and merge in the freehold’ (DRO 4930 B/E/M/164a). There are some manorial records from 1620 in DRO (D5919, from the Ellis family). [IJFM]