ColefordDevon ◆ The village by the fordGlimpses of the unexpected
Every old village has stories. Coleford has some that sound almost invented — but the real records can be more compelling than the legends.
Just enough to make you curious
These are short introductions, not chapters taken from our books. Some details are firmly documented; others survive as local traditions.
One violent storm, four particularly vulnerable households and a village crossing that would never be quite the same. Contemporary reports tell of cattle swept away and bridges lost. Behind the statistics are the names of the people who had to rebuild their lives.
Based on contemporary reports and later parish reconstruction.
Was Charles I really at Coleford? The local story says the king reviewed troops from the Porched House. His recorded route through Devon offers a tantalising clue — but also raises a question about the traditionally quoted date.
The porch episode remains tradition, not an established historical event.
During the building of the railway, labourers lodged at Coleford's Ship Inn. Local accounts even recall cheap sleeping places on straw. Then, in 1853, trouble around the inn reached the courts. A sleepy rural crossroads was having a rather lively decade.
A mixture of local recollection and documented court evidence.
Behind the familiar village scene was a working smithy, a wheelwright and the bustle of passing trade. One Coleford blacksmith is named in an estate document from 1833 — and the forge was among places later linked with the devastating flood.
The 1833 smithy evidence is documented; some flood-property identifications are reconstructed.
The New Inn's name appears in records by 1800, but its story reaches into earlier tenements and the changing lives of generations of landlords and families. The building is more than a place to stay or enjoy a meal: it is part of the village's long memory.
Early property sequences are complex and handled in detail in the parish research.
Not every local character had two legs. Stories of Captain, a male parrot associated with the New Inn at Coleford, sit alongside dramatic events and old records in the parish story collection. Village history has room for a smile, too.
A village-memory story; preserved as such rather than turned into an invented anecdote.
A beginning, not the full story
Colebrooke Parish Stories and Colebrooke Parish — Volume I explore these subjects and many others with fuller accounts, illustrations, maps and research.
Meet the parish books