Monkleigh

from

A Topographical Dictionary of England

by

 Samuel Lewis (1831)

Transcript copyright Mel Lockie (Sep 2016)

MONKLEIGH, a parish in the hundred of SHEBBEAR, county of DEVON, 2¾ miles (W. N. W.) from Great Torrington, containing 509 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Barnstaple, and diocese of Exeter, rated in the king's books at £12.14.7. Mrs. Saltern was patroness in 1815. The church, dedicated to St. George, contains a wooden screen, an altar-tomb under an arch in the later English style, and some interesting monuments, among which is one to the memory of Sir William Hankford, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who died here in 1424, or, as tradition relates, was accidentally killed by his parkkeeper, near a tree still called Hankford's oak.