Bagtor


Bagtor is an historic estate in the parish of Ilsington in Devon, England. It was the birthplace of John Ford the playwright and poet. The Elizabethan mansion of the Ford family survives today at Bagtor as the service wing of a later house appended in about 1700.

Descent

Early records

The manor of Bagetore is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the seventh of the twelve Devonshire holdings of Nicholas the Bowman, one of the 52 Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief of King William the Conqueror. His tenant was a certain Roger, and before the Norman Conquest of 1066 it was held by a Saxon named Ordric, who had held six of the manors later obtained by Nicholas the Bowman.
The earliest holder of the manor of Bagtor recorded by the Devonshire historian Sir William Pole is the de Bagtor family. In the Book of Fees it is recorded as held from the feudal barony of Plympton by "William de Baggetorre", who also held Aller in Abbot's Kerswell, also a former holding of Nicholas the Bowman. According to Pole, it was subsequently held by the Beare family.

Ford

Rev. Thomas Tothill resided at Bagtor. His daughter and heiress Penelope Tothill married Thomas Lane of Bradley, Newton Abbot; of Coffleet in Yealmpton and of Spridleston, all in Devon, Sheriff of Devon in 1784..
Bagtor was later part of the large Dartmoor estate of John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton, whose seat was at Spitchwick, about 6 miles to the south-west.