History

Great Doccombe Farm was built around 1560, is a typical Devon Long house and would originally have consisted of a long, single-storey granite structure with a central 'cross-passage' dividing it into two rooms. One was occupied by the human inhabitants; their animals were kept in the other, especially during winter.

Early longhouses had no chimney - the smoke from a central fire simply filtered through the thatched roof. Windows were very small or non-existent. The cross-passage had a door at either end, and with both of these open a breeze was often created which made it an ideal location for winnowing.

History of Doccombe

Following the death of Thomas A Beckett in 1170 the murderers were banished to the Holy Wars in the Middle East. One of this number, William de Tracy, a Knight whose family were wealthy landowner was first of the four to surrender himself to the pope's mercy where Alexander III bade them serve under the Templars for fourteen years, in addition to a lifelong penance of fasting and prayer.

Tracy, however, got no further than Cosenza in Sicily. There he was smitten with a horrible disease, his flesh decaying while he was yet alive, and he died in agony, praying incessantly to St. Thomas. By a charter without date of place or time, William de Tracy granted the manor of Doccombe to the chapter of Canterbury 'for the love of God, the salvation of his own soul and his ancestors' souls, and for love of the blessed Thomas, archbishop and martyr, of venerable memory, for the clothing and support of a monk to celebrate Masses for the souls of the living and dead.

In 1880 the Hamlet was purchased by the vicar of Dunsford, the Reverend Gregory, whose descendents donated a barn to be used as a chapel and meeting place and eventually sold the land and properties to the tenants in the early part of the 20th Century.