ABSTRACT
Consumers found it unnecessary to leave the parish in order to fulfil most of their needs. In the absence of district and county councils, the day-to-day administration of local affairs was carried out almost entirely by parishioners, on a voluntary basis, in the shape of the elected Vestry, which was common to all parishes, and in Colyton’s case the self-selecting Feoffees and Twentymen. Again, when the decline of lacemaking affected the employment of girls, and the agricultural depressions of the 1870s and 1880s caused the reduction of farming jobs available to boys, Colyton looked after its own by giving the young people of the parish work which, in more prosperous times, had gone to incomers. Although in 1857 the Colyton watchmen were replaced by a police constable from the Exeter force, the officer concerned lived and worked within the parish and so knew and was known by its inhabitants.
