Barnstaple Cemetery Barnstaple Cemetery Barnstaple Cemetery (properly Bear Street Cemetery) is the burial ground for the town of Barnstaple in Devon and is managed by North Devon Council. The cemetery opened in 1856 for the Barnstaple Burial Board and extends over an area of 13.2 acres and is bisected by a stream between the two slopes on which the cemetery is laid out. It has two chapels and a Cemetery Lodge (now in private ownership), with the Lodge being designed by the Barnstaple Borough Surveyor Richard Davie Gould and having Grade II listed building status since 1999. The main entrance with a
Barnstaple August) by a jury of twelve. However Barnstaple was a mesne borough and was not held by the Mayor and Corporation in chief from the king but from the feudal baron of Barnstaple, later known as the lord of the "Castle Manor" or "Castle Court". The Corporation tried on several occasions to claim the status of a "free borough" which answered directly to the monarch and to divest itself of this overlordship, but without success. The mayor was not recognised as such by the monarch, but merely as the bailiff of the feudal baron. The powers of the borough were