Buckland Monachorum
village and civil parish in Devon, United Kingdom
Buckland Monachorum is a village and civil parish in the West Devon district of Devon, England, situated on the River Tavy, about 10 miles north of Plymouth.
In 2006 the neighbourhood had an estimated 1,511 residents and 654 dwellings. The electoral ward of the same name gave a population of 3,380 at the 2011 census. At the 2011 United Kingdom census the civil parish had a population of 3,763.
Domesday Book (1086) records Buckland Monachorum (Bocheland) as having 46 households, land for 15 ploughs, a salt pan and a fishery. It was in the possession of William de Poilley, one of 17 estates he held in southern Devon as a tenant-in-chief of William the Conqueror.
Near to Buckland Monachorum is Buckland Abbey, home of Sir Francis Drake during the Elizabethan era. The village is the site of St Andrew's, a 12th-century church with a Saxon baptismal font and the tombs of the Drake family and Lord Heathfield, the defender of Gibraltar, many historic buildings, and a complex of interesting gardens, known as "The Garden House". The Gift House, a seventeenth-century Almshouse, was built by a descendant of Sir Francis Drake.
The Drake Manor Inn - a public house, restaurant and B&B - is also situated in the village.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Buckland Monachorum” as village and civil parish in Devon, United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as village and civil parish in Devon, United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q784807. VIAF identifies the subject as 124586517. The Library of Congress control number is nb2004311033. Authority coordinates are 50.496, -4.131. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2011 and 1086.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Buckland Monachorum”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Buckland Monachorum primary sources, Buckland Monachorum archive and Buckland research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Buckland Monachorum”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Buckland Monachorum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.