Sidmouth

Sidmouth (ˈsɪdməθ) is a town on the English Channel in Devon, South West England, southeast of Exeter. With a population of 12,569 in 2011, it is a tourist resort and a gateway to the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. A large part of the town has been designated a conservation area. The origins of Sidmouth pre-date recorded history. The Sid valley has been in human occupation since at least the Iron Age as attested by the presence of Sidbury Castle, and possibly earlier given the presence of Bronze Age burial mounds on Gittisham Hill and Broad Down. The village of Sidbury itself is known to be Saxon in origin with the Church crypt dating to the seventh century. However, the Sid Valley was divided into two ecclesiastical land holdings, with Sidbury and Salcombe Regis being gifted by King Athelstan to Exeter Cathedral, and Sidmouth, which was part of the manor of Otterton, was gifted by Gytha Thorkelsdóttir (the mother of King Harold Godwinson) to the Benedictines at Mont-Saint-Michel. Sidmouth appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Sedemuda, meaning "mouth of the Sid". Like many such settlements, it was originally a fishing village. By the 1200s, Sidmouth had expanded to become a market town of similar size to Sidbury and generating more income for the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel than Otterton. By this time, Sidmouth already had a parish church, as the Otterton Cartulary refers to a grant of 30 acres of land to Guilielmas, the vicar in Sidmouth, as a glebe, and excavations in 2009 during the remodelling of the parish church revealed foundations dating from that time. It is likely that the church was already dedicated to St Giles, as the annual fair was held on his feast day 1 September. According to one of the many blue plaques found around Sidmouth, not far from the church was a chapel dedicated to St Peter built sometime before 1322, the remaining wall of which is now part of Dukes Hotel. During the 14th century, Sidmouth enjoyed a degree of prosperity from the wine trade and, as part of the manor of Otterton, was transferred by King Henry V from Mont-Saint-Michel to Syon Abbey.