LINTON, or LYNTON, a village and a parish in Barnstaple district, Devon. The village stands on the coast, near the mouth of the rivers Lyn, amid magnificent and romantic scenery, 14 miles E by N of Ilfracombe r. station, and 17½ NE of Barnstaple; is a resort of tourists and sea-bathers; enjoys sea communication by calls of the Bristol and Cardiff steamers, and land communication by coaches to Minehead, Ilfracombe, and Barnstaple; commands facilities for hunting, fishing, and other sports; possesses rich attractions of walks, rides, and scenery, for visitors; and has a post office ‡ under Barnstaple, four hotels, and a small coasting trade.—The parish contains also the village of Linmouth, and the hamlets of Linbridge, Barbrook-Mill, Cherry-Bridge, Ilkerton, and Dean. Acres, 7,193; of which 30 are water. Real property, £5,387. Pop., 1,043. Houses, 231. The property is not much divided. The manor-or rather the three manors of Linton, Lyn, and Woolhanger-with Linmouth House, belongs to J.Roe, Esq. Rock Lodge is the seat of T. L. Roe, Esq.; Linton Cottage, of E. Sanford, Esq.; Clooneavin, of General Rawden; and Ley Abbey, ofBailey, Esq. The river or rivers Lyn drain most of the parish; take their name from the prevalence of cascades, deep falls, and dark ravines within their bed; and give their name, with the addition of the syllable for "town, ''to the parish. The scenery, in most parts, is of the same wild, grand, romantic character as in the part around Linmouth, and noticed in our article on that village. A path, called the North Walk, leading from Linton village to the Valley of Stones, to Castle Rock, and to other highly interesting spots, is particularly interesting; goes midway across a rapid declivity of about 700 feet; forms one of the most remarkable terrace-walks anywhere to be seen; and commands a view of the gorge of the East Lyn, of a sweep of dismal coast to Linmouth Foreland, and of a vast extent of ocean horizoned by the cloud-like mountains of Wales. The Valley of Stones is a vale about a mile long, but not above 100 yards wide, between two lofty and somewhat steep ridges of hill: is overspread, in every direction, by vast fragments of rock; and derives a weird impressiveness from vast masses of bare rock on the hill ridges, appearing here and there like rude natural columns, and arranged so fantastically along the summits as to resemble extensive ruins. Southey describes the N ridge as "completely bare, excoriated of all turf and all soil, the very bones and skeleton of the earth, rock reclining upon rock, stone piled upon stone, a huge terrific mass; ''and he adds, respecting the valley,-" A palace of the pre-Adamite kings, a city of the Anakim, must have appeared so shapeless, and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped after the waters of the flood subsided. ''So late as 1824, all the traffic and farm carriage of the parish was done by pack-horses and sledges; and not a wheeled carriage of any kind was known. Antiquated notions, or notions peculiar to very sequestrated regions, particularly dire superstitions notions about "pixies ''or fairies, still linger among the peasantry. The hunting of red deer in Exmoor forest, begun in August, is a great sport for Visitors and the resident gentry; and a pack of stag-hounds is kept for it at Linbridge. The living is a p. curacy, united with the p. curacy of Countesbury, in the diocese of Exeter. Valne, £120.* Patron, the Archdeacon of Barnstaple. The church figures strikingly in the centre of Linton village; was enlarged in 1817, and again in 1833; has a square tower; and contains many ancient monuments. There are an Independent chapel and a national school.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))