Coplestone Road

The original Coplestone was a tenth-century boundary stone on the main Exeter to Barnstaple road, marking the point where three parishes meet - it is referred to in a charter of 974 as the "copelan stan". By the late twelfth-century early records tell of the family that became known as the Coplestones on the estate of that name. And there they stayed for many hundreds of years, however in 1472 Warleigh Point at Tamerton came into the family through marriage and sometime in the sixteenth-century the Coplestones left their ancestral home near Crediton and moved down here.

Tamerton Church comtains many memorials dedicated to the Coplestone family, the most striking of which is the one erected in 1617 for John Coplestone and his family. I shows husband and wife kneeling, facing each other with their children in a panel below. outside the church the famous Coplestone Oak is said to be where Christopher Coplestone is thought to have murdered his godson after the latter had expressed his resentment at the other's foul language as they were leaving church. Coplestone is thought to have escaped hanging only because he surrendered some 13 Cornish manors to the Crown.

EH 2 December 1995