Creedy, Sandford
It is surrounded by a large park, the boundary of which is enclosed by a stone and brick wall several miles long.
According to Pole Creedy Peitevin was held by the Peitevin or Peytevin family (Latinized to Pictavensis) until the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272), when it passed by an heiress to Sir John Wiger, whose son Henry Wiger sold it to William Lord Martin, feudal baron of Barnstaple.
[8][9] Prideaux sold it to Sir William Peryam (1534–1604), of Little Fulford, on the east side of the River Creedy, in the parish of Shobrooke, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
Concerning the estate called in his day Creedy Wiger, he wrote that Peryam "bwilt theire a fayre dwellinge howse & left it to descend unto his fowre daughters, Mary my wife..." etc.
[3] It is well established however that the house Peryam built and lived at was Little Fulford, in the parish of Shobrooke, which Pole thus seems to make identical with Creedy Wiger.
[14] He was three times Mayor of Exeter, in 1584, 1594 and 1604,[15] and in about 1600 built the first recorded mansion on the Creedy estate which was called "New House".
[12] He married twice, by his first wife he left no issue, as his second wife he married Margaret Southcott, daughter of George Southcott of Calverleigh,[17] Devon,[14] second son of John Southcott (died 1556) of Indio in the parish of Bovey Tracey, Devon,[18] by whom he had a son and heir Sir John Davie, 1st Baronet (died 1654) and a daughter Margaret Davie, wife of Gideon Haydon of Cadhay, Epford and Woodbury.
[19] He founded two alms houses, one in the parish of St Mary Arches, Exeter, and another in Crediton, each for relief of two poor men and their wives, and two single persons.
He married twice: firstly to his second cousin[21] Juliana Strode (died 1627), a daughter of Sir William Strode (1562–1637), MP, of Newnham, Plympton St Mary, Devon, by his 1st wife Mary Southcote (died 1617), daughter of Thomas Southcote, of Indio, Bovey Tracey.
She was a sister of William Strode (1594–1645), MP,[22] one of the Five Members whose attempted arrest in the House of Commons by King Charles I in 1642 sparked the Civil War.
Her mural monument survives in Sandford Church, erected by John Hippisley Coxe (1715–1769), builder of the grand mansion Ston Easton Park in Somerset.
In 1825 he built Sandford School, which survives in use today, a "surprisingly grand"[37] building in the form of an ancient Greek temple with Doric columns and a large pediment on which was originally sculpted the Davie crest.
He died unmarried and was the last in the male line of the Davie family descended from the 1st Baronet, and on his death the baronetcy became extinct.
He was the son of Robert Ferguson (1767–1840) of Raith, Whig Member of Parliament for Fifeshire, Haddingtonshire and Kirkcaldy Burghs, and Lord Lieutenant of the county of Fife.
He was a captain, Grenadier Guards, Liberal MP for Barnstaple, Devon, 1859–65 and High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1873.
He married Frances Harriet Miles, 5th daughter of Sir William Miles, 1st Baronet (1797–1878), of Leigh Court, near Bristol, Somerset, by whom he had two daughters and six sons, two of whom were killed in action during World War I, as their monuments in Sandford Church record, namely his third son Lt.Col.
Creedy House burnt down in November 1915,[42] at about the time of his father's death, and he quickly set about rebuilding it between 1916 and 1921, in a "conservative Jacobean" style, in dark stone which made it "rather forbidding".
[45] In 1960 a banquet was held in the great hall for Princess Margaret, who stayed the night at Creedy Park as a guest of the 5th Baronet, after having unveiled a statue to St Boniface in Holy Cross Church, Crediton,[46] on Sunday 24 July 1960.
[47] In 1982 Creedy House, having been sold, was converted into 13 residential units, and continues today in ownership of ten residents, with 15 acres of communal woodland.
