Qualla: Manor of Orleigh https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Manor of Orleigh https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh Manor of Orleigh: Introduction https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit RobThinks, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the year 975, a Saxon nobleman named Ordwulf - son of the man who had founded Tavistock Abbey on the family's instructions - gave away a small estate four miles southwest of what would become Bideford. The estate was called Orlege. The gift was endowment for the abbey his father had planned and he had built. From that act of medieval piety, the manor of Orleigh begins a thousand-year paper trail of feudal tenants, heiresses, dissolutions, marriages, and inheritances, all attached to a manor house that still stands in the parish of Buckland Brewer.

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Image: RobThinks | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Manor of Orleigh: From a Lost Cartulary https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0. The manor is not in the Domesday Book of 1086, but historians have long suspected it was rolled into the adjacent manor of Abbotsham for administrative purposes - Abbotsham being a Tavistock holding listed in Domesday. The first clean record of Orleigh as its own thing comes in a...

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Image: Philip Halling | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-from-a-lost-cartulary.mp3 0:06 2 full Manor of Orleigh: Four Centuries of Denys https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the late 12th century until 1641, Orleigh belonged to a family called Denys. Their first known holder, Josceline le Deneys, appears in the 1166 Cartae Baronum as a tenant of Henry de Pomeroy, the feudal baron of Berry Pomeroy down in South Devon. The Denys family held Pancra...

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Image: MichaelMaggs | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-four-centuries-of-denys.mp3 0:06 3 full Manor of Orleigh: The End of the Male Line https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit David Rogers, CC BY-SA 2.0. Anthony Dennis, born 1585, was the last Denys male. He married twice. His first wife Elizabeth Wise gave him a son who died young and two daughters who died younger. His second wife was Gertrude Grenville, of the famous West Country Grenvilles - daughter of Sir Bernard, granddaug...

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Image: David Rogers | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-the-end-of-the-male-line.mp3 0:06 4 full Manor of Orleigh: Tobacco and Smallpox https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit own photo, Public domain. The Davie family bought Orleigh on the proceeds of Bideford's late-17th-century tobacco trade. John Davie's son Joseph married Juliana Pryce, daughter of a Welsh baronet, and rebuilt much of Orleigh Court. The arms of Davie impaling Pryce survive on lead hopper-heads in the roof ...

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Image: own photo | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-tobacco-and-smallpox.mp3 0:06 5 full Manor of Orleigh: Birthplace of an Explorer https://qualla.com/manor-of-orleigh/ Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)), Public domain. In the early 19th century the Lee family let Orleigh to William Speke of Jordans, near Ilminster in Somerset. Six of the Speke children were born at the manor. The eldest, born in 1827, was John Hanning Speke - the explorer who in 1858 became the first European to see Lake Victor...

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Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/h/f/manor-of-orleigh-wp/gchf-manor-of-orleigh-birthplace-of-an-explorer.mp3 0:06 6 full