You are here:
Fairy Cross
Fairy Cross maps
Historic maps of Fairy Cross and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Fairy Cross maps
Fairy Cross photos
We have no photos of Fairy Cross, although we do have photos of these nearby places:
Alwington| Littleham Bideford| Parkham| Abbotsham| Littleham| Bucks Mills| Bideford| Westward Ho!| Northam| Weare Giffard| Woolsery| Westleigh| Appledore| Clovelly| Instow| Taddiport| Torrington| Little Torrington
Fairy Cross area books
Displaying 1 of 26 books about Fairy Cross and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Fairy Cross
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Fairy Cross.
Add your memory of Fairy Cross
or of a photo of Fairy Cross.
Our Old Home
Hi We lived in Fairy Cross at Keepers Cottage, it used to belong to the Pine Coffin family, for a number of years, very happy there.
Simple Times
Well our address was quite easy ,
Fairy Cross,
Near Bideford,
North Devon.
Tel. Horns Cross 328 !!
Our mail always found us with no problems at all. There were not a lot of us there in those days. We lived in Headons Cottage, it used to have a thatch roof until it caught fire in the mid 1960s and was then replaced with slates. I remember the walls were made of cob and would crumble away if you kept running your toys or marbles into the same place!! The cottage had been a German doctor's house in the 1700s and his faded old plaque was still above the front door - Dr. Wacerill is buried at Alwington church yard - old Colonel Pine Coffin asked my parents to leave the plaque there for historical reasons and I hope it is still there!! My father knocked down a big room adjoining the kitchen as it was in bad repair. The kitchen had a big open fireplace - nothing like a... Read more
Devon memories
Growing up in The 1960's
We lived in Headon's Cottage, Fairy Cross - it had been an old German doctor's cottage in the 1700s, a Doctor Wacerill who is buried in St. Andrew's churchyard, and his faded plaque was still above the front door - walls made of cob and thatched roof etc. We were just up the road from Portledge drive - my grandfather William George Harris was woodsman and forester on the Portledge Estate for the Pine-Coffin family for over 50 years and his grandfather before him had been the estate foreman. As a boy I very often walked our Rottweiler dog , Limbo, down Portledge drive turning into the woods halfway down and making our way over some wooden bridges and past a couple of huts my grandfather had made for shelter, past what seemed to be a big lake often with ducks on it and ending up at the sea - also remember the wooden beachhut there (I suppose for changing into swimming costumes - not that it got much use!)... Read more
Church Going in The 1960's
As local village children we used to walk from Fairy Cross meeting other children from the council houses along the way and wind our way through the narrow lane, sometimes picking wild strawberries in summer - moving out of the way of cars that needed to pass us - usually on their way to church also - untill we arrived at St. Andrews, Alwington. We always sat up in the choir stalls with Mrs. Elston (who had been my first teacher at Abbotsham school - Alwington school, where my mother had attended, had closed some years previously because of low numbers and all from our village then went by bus to Abbotsham). I can remember at special services - Christmas etc. - that some of us children would read from the Bible to the congregation and when I did this I was always very nervous and once I lost my place and it seemed like ages before I found it again! Old Colonel and Mrs Pine-Coffin were always in the... Read more
Coffin Ancestry
My great-grandmother was Ellen Amanda Coffin, she was a direct descendent of Richard Coffin who was granted the parish of Alwington and the surrounding area by William the Conqueror for his services during the Norman Conquest (1066). Ellen Amanda Coffin was descended from Richard through the line of Peter Coffin who was born in 1535 at Portledge, Devonshire, England. Peter's son Tristram Coffin emigrated to America in 1642. Ellen Amanda Coffin was a seventh generation descendant of Peter. In the late 1800s Levi Leighton in his writings about his home-town of Columbia, Maine, mentions the local connection to Richard Coffin and Richard's service to William the Conqueror by whom he was rewarded with land and title. Ellen Amanda Coffin married Otis C. Tibbetts in 1855 and died in Columbia Falls, Maine, in 1899. I am 73 years old and living in Columbia Falls, Maine, and grew up in the house where Ellen and Otis had brought up thier family.
Evacuee
I was an evacuee to Parkham in 1943 and would love to hear from anyone who might have been there at that time. I had very happy memories of Parkham and attending the village school.
If anyone has memories of this period please contact me.
My email address is alecnav@hotmail.co.uk
Abbotsham School In The 1960's
Growing up at Fairy Cross, Alwington and as our village school had closed in the late 1950s we had to catch the school bus daily morning and afternoon to Abbotsham Primary School. (Shown in the centre back of the picture next to St Helens Church). I started in 1963 in the "little ones class" of the two roomed school. Mrs Elston was my first teacher there and she had also taught at Alwington School before it closed - Miss Ball was the headmistress throughout my time there. I can remember the outside boys toilet block in the playground (no flushing then) before they were replaced later in the decade and also there was an old victorian cloakroom (never used by us then - complete with all the hooks and very dusty and dirty because nobody went in there but we could look in through the locked gates) and after one summer holiday break we came back and found that Miss Ball had a new office thanks to the old cloakroom... Read more
