EAST DOWN

Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:

EAST DOWN is the ancestral home of the Northcote family, of which Sir Stafford Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, was the head. Northcote, now a farmhouse, was a Domesday manor. The family owed its rise mainly to a fortune made in the cloth trade at Crediton in the 16th century. Churchill and Bugford were also Domesday manors in this parish. East Down House, formerly the seat of the Pines, later the Pine-Coffins, is a handsome early Georgian house. The church (St. John the Baptist) was rebuilt, except the tower, in 1886-7, but is interesting for its fittings. There are carved Jacobean pews in the Pine chapel and a monument to Edward Pine (1663)-lieutenant-colonel to Sir Hugh Pollard in the late unhappy wars. There are also a restored 15th century screen, a Renaissance marble font on an elaborately carved shaft, an old Spanish lectern, an 18th century pulpit, and an E. window by Kempe. The capitals of the S. arcade are carved with sporting scenes.

East Down

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