Highweek

History

The first documentary reference to the place now known as Highweek is as Teyngewike in c. 1200. This referred to its position as a settlement (wick from Anglo-Saxon wic) near the River Teign. By 1301 it was being called Heghwyk, the reference to the prominent (high) hill on which it stands having taken over though the name Teignweek was still in use as late as 1850.

Highweek stands in an area which experienced invasion and settlement in around 700 AD by the Saxons and then by the Danes in 1001 AD, when they sacked and pillaged the nearby village of Kingsteignton. In the village is a Norman motte-and-bailey earthwork known as Castle Dyke, that was built to protect the manor of Teignwick. It is a scheduled monument that is included in the "At Risk" register, but still stands tall "...crowned by two surviving pines."

The parts of the Hundred of Teignbridge—including Teignwick—that lay to the west of the River Teign were owned by the king, but in 1237 Henry III granted them to Sir Theobald de Englishville. De Englishville apparently never married and had no children, and shortly before his death in 1262 he conveyed his lands to his nephew Robert Bushel, who held them until his death in 1269. This was apparently an early death, for he left as his heir a son, named Theobald, aged only four years. Theobald's guardians were Henry and Matilda de Bickleigh and it is likely that they abandoned Castle Dyke in favour of a new manor house built in the nearby valley of the River Lemon around this time.

During the 13th century the settlement north of the River Lemon became known as Newton Bushel after the Bushel family. In 1402 they were succeeded as lords of the manor by the Yardes. Richard Yarde built most of the present Bradley Manor, though a few remnants of the late 13th century Bushel building still survive.

Newton Bushel combined with New Town of the Abbots (of Torre Abbey) from the south side of the River Lemon to form what became known as Newton Abbot. Highweek is now joined to Newton Abbot and is administratively part of Newton Abbot under Newton Abbot Town Council and Teignbridge District Council.

Geography

Highweek is on a ridge that overlooks the South Devon market town of Newton Abbot, the Teign Estuary and the Bovey Basin. To the north west, Haytor and surrounding parts of Dartmoor dominate the skyline, and to the north east the Haldon Hills some 9 miles away towards Exeter can be seen. Immediately north of the village there is the unusual cone shaped hill of Daracombe Beacon that overlooks the ball clay opencast pit of Ringslade Quarry, Howton Road and the 1st Highweek Village Scout Group building. The Beacon has a cluster of trees on its peak and is one of the highest points in Newton Abbot at 82 m. Another high point immediately north of the road of Gaze Hill contains a hidden covered municipal water tank.

The village gives its name to a geological unit (the Highweek Unit) that extends for at least 8 km westwards from the village. The geology underlying Highweek itself is Gurrington slate of Famennian age (a late subdivision of the Devonian period), with small outliers of resistant spilites forming both the ridge on which the church stands and the hills north of the village, such as the aforementioned Daracombe Beacon.

Modern Highweek

Today Highweek has a public house called the Highweek Village Inn, a garage, village hall, and a late medieval church. Within the parish boundary there are two secondary schools with sixth forms, Coombeshead College and Newton Abbot College, and another church: St Mary the Virgin, Abbotsbury. At the meeting point of the road of Highweek Village and Coombeshead Road there are rustic cottages and terraced houses. There was a village post office into the 1990s, opposite the Highweek Inn at the top of Pitt Hill Road, but it is now residential.

All Saints Church

By 1427 the parishioners had built a chapel at Highweek, but they had to carry their dead about three miles to the parish church in Kingsteignton. They petitioned Pope Martin V for their own graveyard because "the tides and rivers, and the mud of winter and the intense heat of summer" made the journey "both troublesome and dangerous to accomplish". The pope granted permission in a bull dated 14 May 1427, and the church and its churchyard were consecrated by Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter on 19 April 1428. Until 1864 it remained a chapel of ease to Kingsteignton. All Saints has the Bradley aisle which was built by Richard Yarde of Bradley Manor in the 15th century, and it also had a rood screen that was said to be "beautiful" until it was mutilated in 1786 and later removed completely.

Today, the church is a Church of England place of worship in the Diocese of Exeter, known as Highweek Parish. All Saints shares parishioners in rotating services with the other church in the parish, St Mary the Virgin, Abbotsbury, Church. It is a Grade I listed building. The church sits on a steep sided hill at the end of ridge which runs the length of the village, and is clearly visible for miles around facing St Mary's Wolborough Church on the opposite side of Newton Abbot. The battlemented tower on the west end of the nave carries a flag pole and a lit star at Christmas, which can be seen from Newton Abbot town centre.