Ilsington

Ilsington is a village and large parish on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, in Teignbridge. The parish takes in Haytor Vale, Liverton, South Knighton, Cold East, Harford, Bagtor and Sigford. The Domesday Book of 1086 lists it as Ilestintona. The village grew around a Saxon manor and the church of St Michael.

The earliest mention of the church is in 1187 and its first consecration date is unknown. By the end of the 13th century the parish needed a new building, and the present church took its mainly late 15th-century form when wool and tin money was around. It has three niches above the entrance, a wagon roof over the nave and chancel and a 16th-century oak rood screen. The National Churches Trust and the parish say it has the finest collection of floor ledger stones of any Dartmoor church, including the only chronogram inscription in a Dartmoor churchyard, for a Thomas Ford. A Victorian gazetteer records a major restoration in 1884 and the ruins of an old manor house of the Dinham family near the church.

The playwright John Ford was baptised at Ilsington on 17 April 1586 and is recorded as born at Bagtor House; his best-known play is 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Nobody knows when or where he died, only that it was around 1639. The Silverbrook lead and zinc mine, closed in 1858, and the Haytor granite works gave local work. The 1894 gazetteer gives a parish population of around 1,000.