Kevin Dixon: How Torquay's old ways faded away

Before the nineteenth century, most people didn't need maps. They rarely ventured far from their homes.  But for well-off coach passengers, there were strip maps showing roads and their side turnings. We have one from 1720 of 'The Road from Dartmouth' which includes directions to ‘Brixum’, ‘Paynton’ and Cockington, but not Torquay. This was because Torquay was just a scattering of small rural communities not worth a mention.

Before 1800 Brixham was the largest Bay community with a population of around 3,700. Paignton had 1,600 residents, but ‘Torquay’ totalled only around 800. During the nineteenth century, this situation reversed as ‘Torquay’ saw the arrival of the aristocracy searching for a substitute Riviera, the consumptives seeking a cure, and an influx of rich and poor long-term residents.

By 1850, the town had a population of almost 12,000 with many working-class folk having been drawn in by the expectation of work. They brought with them their country ways, to join with those practised in our farms and hamlets for hundreds of years.

These traditions held the unwritten history of our people. Here were important ideas about community, rooted in nature, survival and companionship; coordinated by the seasons and not by the gears of Torquay’s Town Hall clock.

What incomers founded in the resort was a capitalist society where relationships were to be negotiated and understood only through hard cash. The rhythms of agriculture were suddenly replaced by the demands of an employer. Consequently, these old ways were often not appreciated by the town’s sophisticated elite and they either fell into disuse or were suppressed as Torquay ‘matured’.

Yet, despite the imposition of new ways of working and standard forms of behaviour, Torquay’s working classes quickly adopted and adapted festivities which had been around since before the days of the medieval Torre Abbey.

In 1867 it was reported in the local newspaper that, “On Easter Monday Lower Union Street was obstructed by stalls and swinging boats were in great request. On Tuesday Torre Square and East Street were blocked up with swing boats, caravans, shows and sweet stalls.”

One feature was the election of a Lord of Misrule. This was a fool, a joker, solemnly ‘crowned’, who presided over a chaotic and absurd world where for a short time all authority was turned on its head.

“At Torre the young fellows elected one of their order as Lord Mayor, and chaired him through the town, levying contributions at every public house, after which they visited Torre Abbey, where they never failed to receive a hospitable reception. The day’s perambulation invariably concluded by depositing the civic dignitary in the horse-pond at the bottom of the Avenues.”

It may be worth noting the welcome offered by the Catholic Cary family. Was this a remnant of traditional pre-Reformation attitudes towards community and mutual obligation? And does it stand in contrast to the more money-minded approach of the Anglican Palks on the other side of the Fleet Valley?

Such indiscipline and bad examples, however, could not be allowed to continue in a place which based itself on hierarchy, order and deference. “At length the disorders to which the fair gave rise compelled the Local Board of Health to take decisive measures. And they accordingly directed the police to prevent the thoroughfares from being disrupted. So the fairs were extinguished.”

Other Torquay rural traditions were seen as less of a threat to order but still came to an end.  Accordingly, we are fortunate to have an 1873 report entitled ‘Relics of the Past observed at Torquay, Devonshire’ by geologist, archaeologist and excavator of Kent’s Cavern, William Pengelly.

William correctly identified the coming of the railways in 1848 as the beginning of the end of the old Torquay. “I have occasionally regretted that the extension of the Railway system is so rapidly hunting down, killing, and burying the Past”.

In response, he took the “opportunity of recording a few relics of the past which I have observed at Torquay”.

William described an event that took place on the eve of Mayday where all Torquay’s flower gardens received “visits from a great number of young girls of the artisan and labouring class, who solicit ‘some flowers for the May-doll, sir.'”

If they weren’t given the flowers, “they might be stolen during the following night”. This could be a remnant of feudal pre-Reformation mutual support between lord and tenant and so the pilfering was not really regarded as real theft.

Then, on Mayday morning each girl, with “a thin box about eighteen inches long and covered neatly with a white napkin” visited every house, “or boldly stopping on the Queen’s highway the wayfarers she may chance to meet”. She then “drops a hasty curtsey”, and asks, ‘Will you please to see a May-doll?’ and displays a prettily dressed doll lying on a bed of flowers.”

In response, the girl is rewarded with a coin.

William believed that “the Torquay May-dolls are a relic of the worship of Flora, which Christianity, though established in our island for so many centuries, has not utterly exterminated.”

During another of his explorations, at 10pm on 5 January 1849, William records hearing “repeated sounds of firearms in the direction of the hamlet of Upton”.

On investigation, he found “a ceremony for the purpose of securing a plentiful crop of apples in the coming season.”

The Upton farmer and his labourers were in the orchards chanting in unison:

“I drink to thee

Old sour apple tree,

To bear and to blow

Apples enow;

This year, next year,

And the year after too;

Pocketfulls, hatfulls,

And Tor Abbey Great Barn Full!”

After which they discharged their firearms amongst the trees. This was wassailing, recorded across the cider-producing South West. Again, with regret, William records, “So far as I have been able to find, the ceremony is no longer observed near Torquay.”

On Christmas Eve 1836 William visited Torwood Manor House.  

The Manor was built in 1579 for Thomas Ridgeway and in 1768 was sold to Sir Robert Palk who had made “a princely fortune” as the Governor of Madras. Sir Robert planned to enlarge the Manor to make it one of the region’s best houses but found that the adjacent fields were owned by the Carys.

His attempt to enlarge his lands failed, another episode in the extended squabbling between the Carys and Palks, and so he purchased another estate beyond the Bay where he built Haldon House. No longer required, Torwood House was leased out and, by the time William called, the property had been “converted into a farmhouse” and was occupied by John Madge.

During his 1836 visit, William described how a ceremonial ‘ashen faggot’ was prepared and burnt. “It was made in the farmyard and bound together with as many ‘binds’ of withe as could be well put on it, drawn to the front door of the house by four oxen and taken thence and placed on the blazing hearth… a demand for a gallon of cider was made on the farmer, who promptly supplied it.”

William sadly relates, “At that time the custom was observed in all the principal farmhouses of the district, but it appears to be now a thing of the past.”

Many of these old rituals and ways of thinking, based on the seasons and mutual obligations between all classes, were put down or just faded away. Along with them went the ancient manors and farmhouses that were old Torquay.

Torwood Manor, for instance, fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1843, replaced by four Victorian villas which, in turn, were demolished in the early 1960s. The site is now occupied by an apartment block just off the Babbacombe Road.

All that remains is an ancient Tudor grey stone doorway, a physical and metaphorical gateway to a lost and forgotten, but perhaps sometimes kinder, Torquay.