Kingskerswell

Kingskerswell is a village and civil parish within Teignbridge local government district in the south of Devon, England. The village grew up where an ancient track took the narrowest point across a marshy valley and it is of ancient foundation, being mentioned in the Domesday Book. It has a church dating back to the 14th century and the ruins of a manor house of similar date. The coming of the railway in the 1840s had a large effect on the village, starting its conversion into a commuter town. The village is a major part of the electoral ward called Kerswell-with-Combe. This ward had a population of 5,679 at the 2011 census.It was situated on a busy main road, part of the A380, between Torquay and Newton Abbot until the opening of the South Devon Highway in December 2015. There had been proposals to reroute this road to relieve the traffic bottleneck since 1951.HistoryBeginningsThere are several prehistoric sites on the high ground surrounding Kingskerswell, such as the Iron Age sites of Milber Down, Berry's Wood and Dainton. Kerswell Down, just to the west of the village, is the site of a late Bronze Age/early Iron Age field system, and a hoard of over 2,000 (small copper or brass) Roman coins was found here, near the church, some time between 1838 and 1840. The exact details of how and where the coins were found is not known, and their present whereabouts is unknown too, but in 1878 they were said to bear inscriptions of Gallienus, Tacitus, Probus and others. In 1992 during survey work for a bypass, evidence of a Roman settlement was found at Aller Cross, just north of the village. It may have an early military origin, and if it does it "would be of regional importance".