Croker's Hele, Meeth
Croker's Hele is an historic estate in the parish of Meeth in Devon, England. Descent. Domesday Book. It was one of several estates split-off from the single manor of "Hele", listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the 47th of the 79 Devonshire holdings of Robert, Count of Mortain (died 1090), half-brother of King William the Conqueror and one of his Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief. Robert's tenant was Erchenbald, who held from Robert several other Devonshire manors, including Culleigh, Alverdiscott, Bratton Fleming, Croyde and Stockleigh. The single manor of  Hele listed in the Domesday Book probably involves two adjacent manors of that name, one in the parish of Petrockstowe the other in Meeth. Later sources evidence three further subdivisions of Hele which had occurred by that time, namely: Croker. Hele is the earliest known Devonshire seat of the prominent Crocker family, which according to a traditional Devon rhyme: Crocker, Cruwys, and Copplestone, When the Conqueror came were all at home was one of just three Devon families to have a pre-Conquest pedigree – a claim dismissed by W. G. Hoskins as a "hackneyed jingle" with "not a word of  truth in it". Croker's Hele was the seat of William Crocker, living during the reign of King Edward III (1327-1377). He is the earliest member of the family recorded in the Heraldic Visitations of Devon, although one of his ancestors is known to have been Richard Crocker (fl.1335) of Devon, England, a Member of Parliament for Tavistock (UK Parliament constituency) in Devon in 1335. In the 14th century Croker's Hele was abandoned by John Crocker (William's grandson) in favour of Lyneham in the parish of Yealmpton, Devon, which he had inherited from his wife Alice Gambon , daughter and heiress of John Gambon of Lyneham. The last male of the Crocker family of Lyneham was Courtenay Crocker (died 1740), several times MP for Plympton. Present day. Since 2014 Crocker's Hele has contained a solar farm with power capacity of over 1 MW.