Community Matters: Oldway volunteers have great story to tell

As the nights draw in, some of us hibernate, but others stay busy in the colder, darker months with much to do preparing for the approaching festive celebrations. 

Some make produce and items for Christmas activities and events that are on throughout Torbay. Others volunteer outdoors in our many gardening groups and on allotments.

I visited the Oldway Garden Volunteer Group a few weeks ago and was made to feel very welcome. They showed me around and gave me some history lessons about the estate too. The team is like a family and does much, much more than just weeding the flower beds! 

They have about 60 volunteers in all, who come from all spheres of life, and certainly not all are gardeners, although those that want to garden are highly valued. There is a tea hut and plant stall, lots of maintenance jobs such as mending or making benches and other wooden items, painting, mending and maintaining machinery, or even knitting items for sale. Other duties include secretarial, media treasurer, publicity, and legal. 

Many of their volunteers are retired, including engineers, electricians, builders, teachers, nurses, bankers, government workers, shop workers, caterers, and tour guides. They also have several younger volunteers, some who come with their carers, and those that are doing their Duke of Edinburgh awards. 

It’s well worth a visit; have a look around; it's fascinating. Look out for those cheeky little squirrels! They held a wonderful Halloween Trail in the last half term and will be looking ahead to planning other trails and activities in the future.

Sue Saunders provided the following fascinating information.

In 1871, Isaac Merritt Singer, American founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, bought the Fernham and Oldway estates in Preston Paignton and had a large French villa built on it for his young French wife, Isabella, and their six children.

He died in 1875, two months before its completion. Isabella went back to France in 1877/78, and with the mansion only being used occasionally for family functions, it and the estate were put up for auction in 1892, not reaching the reserved price, so after some negotiation with his siblings, in 1894 Isaac’s son Paris, now a grown man of 27 years, with a sizable fortune, purchased the estate from the Singer Trust Company, set up by his father, and went about redesigning the property and the gardens to resemble a ‘little’ Versailles.

From 1914 to 1918, the grounds were maintained by the hospital staff looking after the war injured in the mansion buildings, which had been turned into the American Women’s War Hospital, and then the Red Cross. It was leased to The Torbay Country Club, which added more tennis courts, an outdoor bowling club, and croquet lawn to the grounds while reopening the swimming pool that Paris had added to the Rotunda, with badminton courts and squash courts in what was once the stables and banqueting hall.

They also opened a tea room on the east side of the ground floor. Then, between 1939 and 1945, the estate was taken over by the RAF for training purposes. 

The Singer Trust then offered the estate and buildings to the Paignton Urban District Council in 1946 for £46,000, asking that they be used for the community, so the council maintained offices there. They amalgamated with Brixham and Torquay in 1968 to become Torbay Council. 

The buildings and grounds were high maintenance; the council decided to sell and moved out in 2013. The sale didn’t go through, but the 17 acres of the gardens at Oldway continued to be cared for by council gardeners until the summer of 2019, when the contract ran out and there was no money to replace them.

Tim Eley, an horticulturist who had been organising volunteer garden groups in Torbay since 1999, was approached by Torbay Council and asked if he would be able to form a volunteer group to take over the care of Oldway Gardens.

This he did, and a team of volunteers formed an association naming the group, The Oldway Gardens Volunteers, and began work in September 2019. 

More and more people offered their help. The group took over the gardeners’ yard and, with Tim’s help, sourced sustainable plants to plant in the gardens and to sell to the public. 

A plant stall was opened, and the old tennis hut was turned into a tea hut in order to raise more funds. 

The group has gone from strength to strength, and in 2021 it was decided that it should apply for charity status.

Please call, text, or email Nina for info about groups and activities in the Preston area. 07929335915, ninacooper@torbaycdt.org.uk