Village History Overview.
It seems likely that there has been a settlement in this area since Saxon times or even earlier.
The “Exeter” Domesday Book refers to the church at “Chingestone”, but nothing remains of the Norman building except the font. In the 12th century the Lordship of the Manor was granted to one Milo de Sancto Mauro. One of the tombs in the churchyard, thought to date from the fifteenth century, allegedly belongs to the Bulbeck family, but the oldest surviving houses are farmhouses of up to 500 years old.
For centuries, the mainstay of the village economy was agriculture. Until the end of the 19th century most of the land was held by a few large landowners, including the Church. By the 1920s, however, these large landholdings had been broken up and sold to individual farmers.
The arrival of the motorway in the early 70s eased commuting as well as long-distance travel and in this decade several groups of new houses were constructed on former farmland. However the village school had already closed (1968) and despite the new housing, the shop and original Post Office was soon to follow, although the Community Post Office opened a few years later.
The 1990s saw further house building on former farmland, as two more farms ceased business, and it was at this time that most of the remaining land within the settlement boundary was developed. At the end of the 90s the Village Hall, by then more than 25 years old, underwent major refurbishment, fitting it for the new Millennium.