Purcombe surname

 Found a rather interesting surname in Blackawton Parish, Coleridge Hundred namely Purcombe; a Richard Purcombe G 4, a William Purcombe G 4, and a Wm Purcombe W1 (1524)/ G1 (1525). A son perhaps of one of the other three although not listed close to them but it was a habit to place sons with another landowner for training although not always the case. When I went to Free BMD to look at the Purcombe surname I found only one entry in Wales in their entire database. That was really interesting in itself. Apparently the parish of Blackawton "was leased by the Abbey at Torre in Torquay from about 1250 until 1539" so lots of records available in the Abbey Cartularies. I have this quote from a website Medievalists.net. There is a Purcombe Farmhouse in Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset (near Bridport). Interesting that the surname should occur in Devon near Totnes. It could be a mistranslation as the surname site at nottingham.ac.uk lists the spellings Pircombe, Pyrcombe, Piricume, Piricumb, Pirecomb, Pirecombe, Pirecumbe as well. None of these possibilities has a hit on Free BMD. I did however find 279 hits on Find My Past and they are in several areas and I have apparently looked this surname up before. There are just 14 records however some in the 1600s and some in the 1800s/1900s. 

The day continues as I work my way through all of the hundreds. I have found a few surnames that interest me namely Mannyng, Vycary, Hervy, Burges, Blake, Snowe, Rowclyff, Bray, Blakemore and of course the ones already mentioned Pyncombe, Pencombe, Penceme, Thomas, Dodderigge, Tencombe, Tynkeham, Charley, Churley. The Purcombe is certainly very interesting but in the south around Totnes is a bit far from North Molton. But for the sake of completeness I blog it and have recorded it. 

At Page 203 and 46 more pages of the 1524-5 Lay Subsidy remains. There is a lot of material in this file. I will probably go through the entire file since I am finding it very interesting. 

These Hundreds along the Channel have a population moving in and out rapidly it would appear between 1524 and 1525. It would be fisheries and trading ships. There are a lot of people marked as alien. A William Blake is a Breton which fits in with Parish Register entries I found a couple of years ago which showed two Bretons in Devon and several in Cornwall with the Blake surname. Blake is in only a few areas in Devon thus far in my perusal of the file.