More information : Bishop's Palace (GT) (Remains of) (T1) (1)
Mentioned in a document (amongst the muniments of Westminster Abbey) C 1500 where the Bishop's Palace at Chudleigh is stated to be in need of repair. (2)
At Chudleigh are several walls and arches of the Bishop of Exeter's Palace.
The palace chapel was dedicated to St Michael.
The Palace is said, by implication, to have been built about the end of the 11th C and ceased to be a Bishop's residence in 1420, when the then Bishop moved to Bishopsteignton. [See Devon 110 NW 4]. (3-5)
The Ministry of Transport propose to cross the site with a 120' road, a Chudleigh by-pass, and the site has just been scheduled under the Ancient Monuments Act. Permission to excavate has often been sought by interested bodies, but always refused by the owner. Lord Clifford.
There is one wall supposed to be the remains of the Palace Chapel [1] [at SX 86607882]. (6)
[Centred at SX 86607885] The Palace site is now the orchard of Palace Farm, an area of numerous unsurveyable ridges and mounds. The remains above ground 8see 1:2500 DEVON 101/12) are fragmentary and generally in a poor state of preservation. None of the walls has been capped and many are ivy covered. The vaulted building is in fair condition and used as a cider store. There is no definites dating evidence for the remains, but the rough construction indicates an early date, possibly as early as the late 11th century. No plan can be deduced by the visible fragments, and the remains of Chapel are questionable because of its apparent N-S orientation and the lack of any
ecclesiatical architecture in the construction. Since the abandonment C.1420 the Palace has probably been used as a "quarry" for the locality, particularly the present farmhouse at the site, a 16th - 17th C building, obviously constructed from the Palace stones.
See also GPs 53/76/6-8 & 53/77/1-4. (7)
GP 53/76/7 Window recess in E side of wall.
GP 53/76/6 Palace wall from SX 86567889 looking W showing unbonded junction of walls.
GP 53/76/8 N wall of building showing old coursed stonework; upper storey and right hand shed modern.
GP 53/77/1 E wall of building; early and apparently original
masonry banded by ink line. (8)
See Archives for 25" survey by N.V.Quinnell. (9)
Remains of Bishops' Palace Farm. Grade II*. (10,11)
The ruins of the Bishop's Palace at Chudleigh and its associated earthworks were surveyed in March 1999 by the RCHME Exeter Office. See the 1:500 scale survey and the report in the archive. A large scale drawing and interpretation of the upstanding ruins were completed at the same time by Exeter Archaeology. (13) |