Walter Bronescombe, Bishop of Exeter

Walter Bronescombe (also spelt Branscombe) was born around 1220, probably in Exeter. One source gives about 1235 instead. Whether his family was the de Branscombes of Edge or a poor Exeter one is argued both ways; Wikipedia sets out each view.

He held a place at St Nicholas's College in Wallingford, was Archdeacon of Surrey, represented Henry III at the papal court in 1250 and was a canon of Exeter by 1254. He was elected Bishop of Exeter on 23 February 1258, consecrated on 10 March and enthroned on 14 April. He went to the Council of Lyons in 1274, founded Glasney College in Cornwall and began rebuilding Exeter Cathedral in the Decorated style around 1260.

His register, covering 1258 to 1280, is the earliest surviving one for the Exeter diocese (not for all of England, as it is sometimes quoted). He died at Bishopsteignton on 22 July 1280 and is buried in Exeter Cathedral, where his black basalt effigy in the Lady Chapel came through the 1942 Blitz under sandbags.

On Dartmoor he is the bishop in the Branscombe's Loaf story. The rock stands on Corn Ridge (SX 5531 8913, 538 m) between Bridestowe and Sourton parishes, above Shelstone Tor. The story goes that the bishop met a stranger offering bread and cheese, the chaplain noticed a cloven hoof, and the food turned to granite. The earliest source found is Sylvia Sayer's The Outline of Dartmoor's Story (1951), and Legendary Dartmoor says the story cannot be dated. So the bishop may be part of an old tale or a later addition, and nobody can say which.

Image: Bishop Bronescombe effigy, Exeter Cathedral, photograph by Julian P Guffogg, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph and Wikimedia Commons.