Qualla: Tamerton Foliot

Tamerton Foliot: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia, CC0. Just outside the churchyard wall of St Mary's, in the village of Tamerton Foliot, an ancient hollow oak still stands. It is called the Copleston Oak, and it has been called the Fatal Oak. According to the Devon biographer John Prince, writing around 1700, this is where John IV Copleston, lord of the manor, stabbed his godson to death after a dispute. The tree is now older than the event it remembers, but the story has outlived the family. By the time John V Copleston died childless in 1632, the great Devon name was extinguished. Locals had a phrase for it: the curse of the oak.

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Image: Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia | CC0

Tamerton Foliot: Where Two Rivers Meet

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Lobb, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tamerton Foliot sits in a green valley on the northern edge of Plymouth, near where the Tamar and the Tavy come together. A small stream runs through the village and broadens almost immediately into a tidal creek, threading past a bridge beneath the Tamar Valley Line railway. Wal...

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Image: Mick Lobb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tamerton Foliot: The Name Behind the Place

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most English villages take their second name from a Norman family who once owned them. Tamerton Foliot is no exception, and the family in question had unusually grand credentials. John Foliot was a half-brother of William the Conqueror, granted large stretches of Devon for servic...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tamerton Foliot: The Fatal Oak

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia, CC0. John IV Copleston was the sort of Tudor gentleman whose monument the village still keeps. His tomb stands in the north wall of the chancel at St Mary's, erected by his widow Susanna in 1617, inscribed in Latin praising him as a man of true virtue and noble descent. He died at War...

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Image: Lobsterthermidor at en.wikipedia | CC0

Tamerton Foliot: From Manor to Suburb

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:ianmacm, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1741 Sir Richard Bampfylde sold Tamerton Foliot to Walter Radcliffe, ending the Copleston-Bampfylde line of inheritance. The Radcliffes still resided at Warleigh in 1822. Warleigh House itself, the Tudor manor on the Tavy that once belonged to the Foliots, the Gorges, the Bonv...

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Image: User:ianmacm | CC BY-SA 3.0