Kevin Dixon: Was Torquay built on seven hills?

The English Riviera website comments that Torquay’s “famous seven hills provide the backdrop to a waterfront scene that matches anything you’ll find on the French Riviera”; others claim that, “Everybody knows that Torquay, like Rome, is built on seven hills”; and we have Seven Hills House on Abbey Road.
 
The idea of seven hills has been eagerly adopted locally and we have the Lodge of the Seven Hills Masonic Temple, founded in 1949, and the Seven Hills Amateur Boxing Club.
 
So, are there seven hills, and was Torquay built on them?
 
Sadly, this is another one of those Victorian and Edwardian myths.
 
First of all, there isn’t a definitive list, though the following have been suggested: Westhill, Barton Hill, Daccombe Hill, Sherwell Hill, Sheddon Hill, Stentiford Hill, and Braddon Hill.
 
Some of these candidates are quite unlikely. Daccombe is a very long way from the original rural communities of Torre and the Strand; while Shedden Hill was only named as such in the 1850s.
 
We’re not even sure of the actual number of hills. AJ Jukes-Browne in the 1907 ‘The Hills and Valleys of Torquay’ identified eight:
 
“It was the boast of ancient Rome that the city stood on seven hills, but in this respect Torquay can claim still greater distinction, for our town spreads over no fewer than eight hills, some of which are higher than those of Rome.
 
On the southern front, presenting bold precipices to the bay, are three fine hills: Waldon Hill, rising above the well known ‘Rock Walk’ to a height of 200 feet above the sea; Vane Hill and its prolongation into Daddy Hole Plain, which are both more than 200 feet high; lastly the wooded and winding slopes of Lincombe Hill with its central ridge which reaches an elevation of 400 feet above the sea.
 
North of the last is the long ridge of Warberry Hill, the summit of which is the crowning height of Torquay (448 feet), and from it descend the western spurs which are known as the Braddons Hill and Stentiford’s Hill. Beyond these, to the North-West, are the smaller eminences of Castle Hill and Torre Hill. These are the eight central hills.”
 
‘Torquay’ certainly wasn’t originally built on seven hills as there wasn’t a Torquay.
 
The manor was recorded in 1086 as Torra, the name deriving from the Old English Torr, a rocky hill. It’s also generally accepted that the ‘tor’ in Torbay refers to the distant hills of Dartmoor. Torrrebay is not recorded before 1401 and ‘bay’ is a Norman word. The suggestion is that the Bay was named by seafarers to differentiate the hills from those of Dorset.
 
Torquay is now built on hills but is a relatively modern town. One of the first mentions of the name ‘Torquay’ seems to come from the execution of Catholic martyr Cuthbert Mayne in 1577. Instructions were given for a “quarter” of his body to be put on a pole at an obscure place called “Torquay”.

 
So why seven hills?
 
It was largely due to prestige and the Victorian and Edwardian enthusiasm for all things classical. The title City of Seven Hills usually refers to Rome. But, since Rome was founded, many cities have declared to have been built on seven hills. These claimants include: Bristol, Brussels, Bath, Madrid, Constantinople, Washington DC, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Seattle, Mumbai, Barcelona, Liverpool, and Brisbane.
 
What usually happened is that a defensive site begins on a hill and then, as a town spreads, it takes in other hills. And so Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ‘Torquay’ began underneath a craggy tor and then spread over the next thousand years to encompass other hills. We just stopped counting when we got to a nice number. Presumably, since the resort has expanded way past the Willows, we’re now built on a dozen or more hills.
 
We don’t even have a good definition of what a hill is. Isn’t Shedden Hill just the lower slope of Waldon Hill?

It’s also notable that the number seven has special significance in the Christian tradition: the seven days of Creation; God rested on and sanctified the seventh day (Sabbath); Noah is commanded to bring seven pairs of every clean animal onto the ark; seven days of the feast of Passover. As a new town with a high degree of self-importance, an imperial mission, and an Anglican elite, seven hills just seemed appropriate.
 
And so, while we can’t really claim to be built on seven hills, there is a link to another place and an ancient prophesy.
 
During the 1880s a mysterious group calling itself ‘The Order of the Temple’ occupied ‘Cloudlands’, a house in Torquay’s Chelston, fairly close to the railway station. Their leader was the eccentric Spiritualist Countess Marie Borel. The countess believed that her adopted son, Prince Baptiste St John Borel, also known as ‘Mr Northlew’, had supernatural God-given powers. She also described herself as the “woman clothed with the sun” who was to “bear the child to rule the world with a rod of iron”.
 
This is a reference to the ‘Woman of the Apocalypse’, a figure from the Bible’s ‘Book of Revelation’ which describes in lurid detail the end of the world. It was written in about AD 95.
 
In the Bible the woman gives birth to a male child who is threatened by Satan. When the child is taken to heaven, the woman flees into the wilderness leading to a ‘War in Heaven’ in which God’s angels eventually triumph. Satan takes his revenge on the woman and, in the form of a dragon, initiates war on “the remnant of her seed”, identified as the righteous followers of Christ.
 
Revelation says, “I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads. The seven heads are seven hills, on which the woman sitteth.”
 
We don’t know whether the countess was attracted to Torquay because of the seven hills myth. She may even have thought of us as the prophesised wilderness. But, after a few months of proclaiming the apocalypse, we hear nothing more of her or the Prince who didn't end up ruling the world after all.
 
On the other hand, the prophesy does say that the end of the world would begin in a place with seven hills…
 
Kevin Dixon is the author of ‘Torquay: A Social History’