It is located within Torridge local authority area and formed part of the historic Shebbear hundred.

[2] The Domesday Book of 1086 lists Frelelestoch as one of the seventy-nine Devonshire holdings of Robert, Count of Mortain (c. 1031–1090), the half-brother of William the Conqueror.

[5] The manor was later held by Sir Roger de Beauchamp who, in about 1220,[4] donated a large part of it to the Augustinian priory dedicated to St Gregory that he had founded within it as a dependency of Hartland Abbey in North Devon.

The lands passed through the hands of John Wynslade, Sir George Carew of Mohuns Ottery, and Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle (d.1542),[6] being later owned by Robert Walpole, 2nd Earl of Orford, (son of the first prime minister), whose wife was Margaret Rolle, 15th Baroness Clinton (1709–1781), daughter and sole heiress of Samuel Rolle (1646–1719) of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe, about six miles south-east of Frithelstock.

Their inscribed ledger stone survives in the floor of the south aisle of Frithelstock parish church.