[citation needed] There are Bronze Age burial mounds just outside the village,[6] but the first documentary mention of the place is in the Domesday Book.

[11] Buckfast Abbey "possessed the advowson" which gave them the right to nominate the parish priest.

Its abbeys were supported by income producing property and tithes, temporalities and spiritualities.

[11] By 1822, it was called both Stow St. Petrock and Petrockstow, and it was located in the Hundred of Shebbear and Deanery of Torrington.

[12] In the 19th century the village had a school, funded by Lord Clinton, and many businesses such as a tannery, blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights.

[16] In the south-east of the parish, at Ash Moor, there are opencast workings for ball clay that extend into the neighbouring parish of Meeth; these clay deposits are in a geological feature known as the Petrockstow Basin,[1][17] and have been worked for hundreds of years.

[7] On the north wall of the church are affixed two monumental brasses of Henry Rolle (left, westernmost)[nb 1] and his wife Margaret Yeo (d.1591),[nb 2] the heiress of the manor of Heanton Satchville within the parish (right, easternmost).

[25] There are very few traces of the mansion of Heanton Satchville surviving today, but it was at one time "one of the most imposing houses ever to exist in Devon".

[26] The manor was mentioned in the Domesday Book,[27] and was then owned by the Sachvilles and Kelligrews, before it passed into the hands of the Yeo family.

[30] The house was destroyed by fire in 1795,[30] after which the Trefusis family purchased a mansion in nearby Huish, renamed it Heanton Satchville, and made it their seat.

[33] The Recreation Ground, covering 8.5 acres, has a nine-hole pitch and putt golf course, skate ramp, cricket pitch, field shelter, and pavilion with a clubroom, kitchen, changing rooms and toilet.

[34] The Tarka Trail, a 180 miles (290 km) circuit, runs from Meeth to Braunton and in this area follows the route of the former North Devon and Cornwall Junction Light Railway.

[35] There are two nature reserves in the area, Meeth Quary and Ash Moor, both owned by the Devon Wildlife Trust.