The History of Cullompton
From a Roman hilltop fort and a Saxon minster to a wealthy wool town scarred by fire and rebuilt in stone — more than a thousand years of Culm Valley history.
Cullompton has been a place of some importance for well over a millennium. Its story runs from Roman soldiers and Saxon kings, through the medieval wool boom that paid for its magnificent church, to the Great Fire of 1839 and the growing town of today. This is a longer read; the facts below are drawn from Historic England, local history archives and contemporary records (see the notes at the end).
Origins and the name
The town’s name comes from the Old English Columtune — the River Culm combined with tun, meaning a settlement or farmstead: literally “the settlement on the Culm.” An older local tradition links the name instead to Saint Columba, to whom the parish church was once dedicated and who, by legend, preached in the area — though this is tradition rather than documented fact.
People were here long before the Saxons. A Roman fort once stood on St Andrew’s Hill, on high ground north-west of the town, occupied in the early centuries AD and rediscovered by aerial photography in the 20th century; the site is now a scheduled monument.
Saxons, Alfred and the Normans
By the Saxon period Cullompton had grown around an important early church, or minster. Its first written mention comes in the will of King Alfred the Great (who died in 899), in which he left Columtune to his youngest son, Æthelweard.
On the eve of the Norman Conquest the manor was held by Gytha, wife of Earl Godwin and mother of King Harold II. After 1066 it was taken from the defeated Godwin family and granted to the Conqueror’s own kin, and by the time of the Domesday Book (1086) Cullompton lay within the Devon hundred of Silverton.
A medieval market town and the cloth trade
Through the Middle Ages Cullompton developed as a market town on the road between Exeter and Taunton. Its long main street was lined with narrow burgage plots — the “courts” and alleyways behind Fore Street still trace that medieval pattern today.
From the 15th to the 18th century the town grew wealthy on wool and cloth. Rich clothiers dominated local life, and their money paid for some of Cullompton’s finest buildings. The most famous was John Lane, a clothier whose fortune funded the spectacular Lane Aisle added to St Andrew’s Church from 1526; its outer walls are carved with cloth shears, teasel-frames and ships — the very tools and trade that made him rich. Read more about St Andrew’s Church →
The Great Fire of 1839
On Sunday 7 July 1839, around the middle of the day and with much of the town at church, fire broke out among the thatched roofs of the lower town, near New Street. It spread with terrifying speed and destroyed a large part of Cullompton.
Exactly how much was lost is disputed: contemporary newspaper accounts put the damage at roughly 100 to 170 buildings (figures around 143–145 houses are often quoted), while some later histories claim as many as 264 — a number local researchers regard as too high. Remarkably, no one is thought to have died as a direct result of the fire itself. The town was rebuilt with slate and tile in place of thatch, which is why so much of the present town centre has its distinctive early-Victorian character.
Mills, wool and paper
Water from the River Culm and its leats powered Cullompton’s industries for centuries. As the old woollen trade declined, papermaking took its place: paper was being made in the Cullompton area from the 18th century, and Higher Kings Mill grew — later under Albert Reed and the firm of Reed & Smith — into a substantial papermaker. Paper is still produced at Higher Kings Mill today. The wider Culm Valley kept its wool heritage too: nearby Coldharbour Mill at Uffculme, working since 1797, survives as a museum still spinning yarn on its historic machinery.
The railway and the modern town
The railway reached Cullompton in the 1840s and served the town for over a century until the station closed in 1964. Today the town is once again on the up: government funding to reopen Cullompton’s railway station was announced in 2023, a Town Centre Relief Road is being built to take traffic off Fore Street, and the new Culm Garden Village to the east is set to add around 2,600 homes in the decades ahead. See Cullompton’s Future →
Historic buildings
St Andrew’s Church
Grade I listed and one of the finest parish churches in the West Country, with a 16th-century tower and the celebrated Lane Aisle. Explore the church →
The Walronds
A Grade I listed townhouse at 6 Fore Street, rebuilt in about 1605 for the lawyer John Petre, whose family had married into the wealthy Parys merchant dynasty. walronds.com →
The Manor House
A Grade II* listed house at 2 Fore Street, built in 1603 for the wealthy clothier Thomas Trock after an earlier house on the site burned down in 1602. Today it is the Manor House Hotel.
The Merchant’s House
8 Fore Street is a Grade II* listed 17th-century merchant’s house — a high-status survival with fine joinery and leaded glass, recalling the cloth-trade wealth of old Cullompton.
Sources & further reading: this history draws on Historic England listing records, the Cullompton History Archive, Wikipedia, and contemporary accounts of the 1839 fire held by Devon Heritage and GENUKI. Spotted an error? Let us know — we want to get the history right.