What lies beneath the Torquay waves
Also known by young locals over the years as Seagull Island, Crab Island, Heartbreak Rock or even Rat Island, the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t seaweed encrusted rock off Torre Abbey Sands does have an official name.
This is Harbreck Rock, a reef of Permian breccia which can be seen at low tide. It’s around 280 million-years-old and was deposited in a desert environment similar to the Middle East today. It lends its name to Harbreck Heights, the apartment block on Warren Road which overlooks the Sands.
Early maps note its existence but usually don’t name it. When they occasionally do, it has also been called Harbrick Rock. By the early twentieth century, however, it is identified by the Ordnance Survey as Harbreck.
Even today the Rock can be a danger to unwary sailors. And in 1930 the historian Ellis confirms that the Rock was a menace. He records that in the mid-1850s the emigrant ship Margaret twice, “narrowly escaped shipwreck on the Harbreck Rocks.”
There may be a connection to Liverpool. An affluent Victorian resident of Torre also owned Harbreck House in Fazakerley. Gores Directory for 1853 records that the cotton and colonial produce broker Jaques Myers lived in Liverpool’s now-lost Harbreck House. In 1881 Helen, Jacques Myer’s widow, lived at ‘The Firs’ in Tormoham” with the help of 10 servants, which “coincidentally overlooks Harbreck Rock in Torbay”. Was that really a coincidence: did Jaques name his house after visiting the Bay; did he name the Rock; or is there another possibility?
And there’s much more hidden out there in our Bay. After extreme storms, the sand can be washed away to expose the forest bed beneath; a “stiff, dark grey clay containing logs, roots and branches”. These are the reminders of the marshy woodland which grew around 5,000-10,000 years ago.
And amongst that ancient forest roamed small groups of humans hunting extinct animals. We know this as, for centuries, folk wandering the Bay’s beaches have been discovering unusual bones and stone tools; while, more recently, trawlers have been dragging up the remains of strange beasts in their nets.
Even way back in 1865 we were finding things. An article by archaeologist and Kent’s Cavern excavator William Pengelly on ‘The submerged forests of Torbay’ tells us, “A few years ago Mr CE Parker purchased an elephant’s tooth off some Brixham fishermen who had just taken it up in their trawl whilst fishing in Torbay”. This was found to have come from an extinct mammoth, further proving that the earth was very… very… old and challenging the timeline of the Bible.
Some of these relics can be seen in Torquay Museum – there are ancient axes, alongside the bones of wild boar, wolves and massive extinct wild cattle called aurochs, all found in Kings Garden. And, after severe storms, it’s even possible to view at Torre Abbey Sands, Goodrington and Broadsands, the exposed remains of a long-submerged forest, comprised of logs, roots and branches.
These are the remains of our antediluvian past, of the Mesolithic -or Middle Stone Age when the sea level was 30 to 40 meters lower than it is now. At that time the British Isles and the European mainland formed a continuous landmass, crossed by great rivers.
But the sea level was gradually rising, at some times by 2 centimetres per year, as water locked away in glaciers and ice sheets was melting. The hunter-gatherers were slowly being flooded out. They were witnesses to the engulfing and death of the forests. Here was a paradise lost as the waters rose.
Some say that this traumatic loss of Eden has fixed itself in the human memory. Many cultures across the world have legends of great floods. Our Celtic contribution to this mythology is the legendary paradise of Lyonesse, supposedly sunken beneath the waves off the South West coast…
Nearer to our own time are the seaweed-covered remnants of Torquay’s first harbour. If you travel along the Torbay Road from Torquay towards Paignton you pass through Livermead. The name is Old English and comes from ‘laefer mead’, ‘the meadow of the wild iris’. To your left is Institute Beach and at low tide are the remains of Torquay’s original harbour.
It is still occasionally described as a Roman harbour. Yet, as it wasn’t mentioned in that great ‘new owners’ catalogue ‘The Domesday Book’, we know it didn’t exist prior to the Norman Conquest. Such a valuable asset certainly would have been listed.
Doomsday records the acquisition of the foreshore of Livermead, but when the pier itself was actually built is unclear. It was likely constructed towards the end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth century.
While there is no known evidence of the date of construction, and no record of any of the ships or traders that used it, it has been generally accepted that it was the work of one of the Lords of Cockington.
The primary contender seems to be William de Falaise, feudal baron of Stogursey in Somerset. From the Exeter Domesday Book we know he held 17 Devon manors as a tenant-in-chief, including Cockington. The assumption is that William needed to maintain a passage to his possessions in Normandy and wanted a landing place for the wine and other products of his homeland.
The harbour was formed by building out eastwards from each end of the headland. This was a bowed pier or breakwater which enclosed the basin with the entrance being between the seaward ends of the pier. Each pier consisted of two parallel walls about 6 feet apart. The intervening space was then filled with rubble.
The pier shows up in records from 1317 when permission was given to the Canons of Torre Abbey to fish with nets at Livermead.
The harbour is mentioned several times over the centuries. The antiquarian and poet John Leland (1503- 1552) describes, “A small peere and socour for fischer boats at Livermead”.
Then we have an illustration of Torre Abbey drawn for Sir John Stowell of Bovey Tracey in 1661 when he had just acquired his new possession. Part of the map illustrates and refers to ‘Leuermead key’. In that illustration we can see the small fishing community of twelve cottages and nine fish stores or cellars that stood between the present Torbay Road and the sea.
Despite the harbour’s slow collapse and replacement by the town’s current harbour, it was still in use during the second half of the 19th century. Goods for Cockington Court would be unloaded at the foot of a pathway running past the eastern side of Livermead Head. Today that pathway is on the western side of the Livermead Cliff Hotel. The goods were then carried up the cliff path across the meadow to Gooder’s Farm in Wheatridge Lane. On the way, a spring allowed the ships crews to replenish their water supplies, and from the farm came food for the next voyage.
In 1711 Rawlyn Mallock leased a place on the pier in “Torkey” suggesting that by then the Livermead harbour was unusable. A 19th century engraving shows the last two of those lost fishing cottages standing above the beach.
Of course, a number of those ships seeking shelter didn’t make it. There are 114 recorded shipwrecks off Torquay and Paignton alone and many more we don’t know about. There’s certainly a lot out there beneath our waves.
Thanks go to Keith Holman for the photo
Kevin Dixon is the author of ‘Torquay: A Social History’
