About Us
Hennock Parish Council is the same as a Town Council; it has the same powers and acts within the same legislation. It is the tier of local government closest to the people. It represents the concerns and aspirations of a genuine local community. The Council provides and maintains a range of services including allotments, play parks, car parks, and bus shelters.
What Can It Do?
As Parish Councils were created in law, Hennock Parish Council can only act within the law by exercising its powers and functions which have been conferred on it by Statutes. The basic responsibility of the Council is to make the lives of its local community more comfortable by representing the whole electorate within the parish, delivering or co-ordinating services to meet local needs and striving to improve quality of life in the parish. It also comments on planning applications.
The Parish Council does not receive Council Tax directly from the public, but it is primarily funded from a small percentage of the Council Tax charge made by Teignbridge District Council and it receives a precept and Council Tax Support grant.
Hennock Parish Council embodies the representation of people’s hopes and concerns for ensuring that local services are provided efficiently and effectively for the benefit of community wellbeing. It is aware of what its community needs and it strives to provide this through team work, accessing grant funding, representation at other meetings and lobbying appropriate bodies.
Hennock Parish Council is the collective voice of its community.
About The Parish
Information provided courtesy of Steven Chown
Hennock is a large parish of 3,469 acres with three main settlements – Hennock, Chudleigh Knighton and Teign Village.
The village of Hennock, mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, is 600ft above sea level with spectacular views across the Teign Valley towards the Haldon Hills. The parish church of St Mary the Virgin is an ancient building in the Early Perpendicular style. The first vicar is recorded in 1207. The primary school was built in 1865 by Sir Lawrence Palk, whose family name has been taken by the local pub, the Palk Arms. The area is predominately agricultural but is also known for its mining, particularly micaceous heamatite, a form of iron oxide used as a constituent of anti-corrosion paint on civil engineering structures across the world including the Eiffel Tower.
Chudleigh Knighton by contrast, situated on the edge of the Bovey Basin, is known for its association with ball clay mining and brick and tile making by Candy’s and later British Ceramic Tiles in nearby Heathfield. At one time the offices of Great Western Potteries, part of Candy and Co, were located at Church House, owned by the manager John Morland Limpus. The village is also mentioned in the Domesday Book as Chenistona – “Roger holds it from the Bishop of Exeter”. And until 1973, when the A38 was turned into a dual carriageway, was on the main route from Exeter to Plymouth.
The church of St Paul, built in 1841-42, is a cruciform structure of Haldon flint – only one of two of this type in Devon. Chudleigh Knighton became an ecclesiastical parish in 1880. The primary school was built in 1873. The village has a local pub – the Claycutters Arms which was probably a cider house before it gained a full licence. The village hall, built by Sir Charles Seale Hayne of Pitt House in 1895, was originally a working men’s club and until the early 1950’s was associated with the temperance movement, intended to keep the thirsty clay workers out of the pubs and cider houses.
Teign Village was built on either side of a lane leading up to Hennock from the Teign Valley by The Teign Valley Granite Company in 1910. All the bricks were made by the Teign Valley Concrete Company, with sand for the mortar from Newton Abbot Glassworks. The Sports and Social Club, still a thriving concern supporting two local football teams in the South Devon League, was founded in 1913 by the local quarry manager.