Kevin Dixon: Place names that hold the key to unlocking Torbay's colourful past

“You’re now at Castle Circus, there isn’t a castle. Drive past the Haldon Centre, turn left and pass the Job Centre into Pimlico and the Pickwick, behind Woolworths, Menzies and M&S. Double back at the GPO roundabout and up past the Odeon Cinema. Keep the Falcon, EJs, and The Mousetrap on your right. Eventually, past Croft Lodge Convent School and the Casino, you’ll see the Railway Inn and the Pelican. Keep going beyond the Clarence Hotel towards Newton Abbot”.

If any of the above directions made any sense at all, you’re probably a Torquinian of a certain age. Younger readers may well be totally bewildered by all these names from the past.

Names tell us a great deal about our history and how the Bay has changed. This is ‘toponymy’, the study of place names. But it isn’t a precise science. We often need to make educated guesses at why a place is known by a certain name, particularly if we go way back into the past. Nevertheless, all placenames meant something to our ancestors and their study offers a great deal of information on how we got here.

Local place names have come to us through the dialects of the Celts, the Germanic Anglo-Saxons, the Norman French, and the Modern English of the past few centuries. Indeed, it’s only in the past 500 years that we would really see English as something we would understand today.

Let's start at the beginning. Some South Devon place names have Dumnonian Brittonic Celtic origins from before 800AD. These are mostly natural features. For example, Tor means ‘rocky hill’; Dart is ‘oak stream’; Kent is 'land on the edge'; Teign is ‘stream’; Exe is ‘full of fish’; Lemon, the river that flows past Newton Abbot’s ASDA, is ‘elm’.

The majority of the names of our present-day communities, however, come from the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the South West. This dialect is known as Old English and dates from 450AD to 1150AD.

Placenames often have common elements, and we can break them down to make a bit more sense. For example, ‘ton’ is Old English for a settlement. So, we may have someone’s name informing us of their link to the settlement. Cockington is, therefore, probably named after an Anglo-Saxon and so we have Cocca's settlement; Paignton is Paiga’s settlement; Preston, the priest’s settlement; Churston, the church settlement.

Taking another example, around 1250 the abbots of Torre Abbey spotted a business opportunity and were given the right to hold a Wednesday market at a nearby river crossing. This was ‘the abbot’s new settlement’. It’s still there as Newton Abbot.

Or the settlement might be known for its location or what grew there. Upton, the upper settlement; Barton, the barley settlement.

A combe is a valley. Hence, we have Ellacombe, the alder tree valley; Watcombe, the wheat valley, Babbacombe, Babba's valley. Widecombe, the Willow Valley.

Berry comes from Burh, a fortified place. So, we have Brixham’s Berry Head, the location of an Iron Age fort; Berry Pomeroy, the fortified place of the Pomeroy family; Warberries, the fortified lookout.

Think of a well as a spring. This gives us Sherwell, the clear spring; Edginswell, Ecgwulf’s spring; Coffinswell, the Coffyn family spring.

The 1086 Domesday Book records ‘Carsewelle’ which means spring where watercress grows. Watercress was an important medieval food and medicine. The land was owned by the King and so we have ‘the King’s watercress spring’. We know it as Kingskerswell. Nearby is another watercress spring, this one was owned by Torre Abbey, so Abbotskerswell.

We mentioned earlier that Tor means ‘rocky hill’ in the Celtic language.  The beginnings of what became Torquay were around the outcrop by Tor Hill Road. Possibly dating back to at least the sixth century, ‘Torra’ was later recorded in Domesday as the manor of Torre held by William the Usher.

As there were so many rocky hills around, the manor needed a more precise name.  And so, we have Tor Brewer when held by William Brewer. It was William who founded Torre Abbey in 1196. William's daughter Alice married Reginald de Mohun (1185-1213) giving us Tor Mohun, still an electoral district of Torquay.

But we still weren’t known as Torquay or Torbay. We know this as both quay and bay are French words and come from the Middle English that was spoken between 1150 and 1500.

The first record we have of the future resort by name is from when the Catholic martyr Cuthbert Mayne was drawn and quartered in 1577. Instructions were given that a “quarter” of his body be put on a pole at a place called “Torquay”. The location, the site of the recently disestablished Catholic Torre Abbey, was presumably chosen to make a political point. It would be another 200 years before Torquay achieved an equivalent outside interest. ‘Torrebay’ similarly isn’t recorded before 1401.

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, there often weren’t even fixed spellings for places across the Bay. People just wrote down what they heard. We have Torrequay, Torkay, Torkey, and Tor Quay; while Paignton is in Domesday in 1086 as Peintone. It has also been known as Peynton, Payngton, Paynton, and Paignton.

As few people travelled, it probably didn’t matter that much. However, the arrival of the railways ended that flexibility. A railway station serving Torquay opened in 1848, with one closer to Abbey Sands and another at Paignton in 1859, and Brixham Road in 1861. Immediately, fixed names were necessary.

How names are pronounced and how they should be spelt can still cause debate even today. On the outskirts of Torquay, there is an inconsequential railway crossing. For decades there has been disagreement on whether this is Lowes Bridge or Lawes Bridge.

The apocryphal story is that, when surveying the railway in the 1840s, a passerby was asked whose land it was and the heavily accented local replied with something that sounded like, “That be Mr Law”. The surveyors wrote down what they had been told. This wasn’t particularly important until we built a new hospital nearby in 1928. As we know that the Hengrave Estate Lodge was occupied by Mr. Lowe, a coachman, Lowes Bridge is correct.

The railway transformed Torquay and a decision was made early on to market the resort as a premier destination for the Empire’s elite and their international counterparts. A ‘Little London’ with similar architecture and amenities to the capital was then created.

Part of the growing town was even renamed Belgravia to make an explicit parallel. At the same time, the hotels were given appropriately impressive names, such as the Palace, the Imperial, the Royal, and the Grand.

The founders of nineteenth-century Torquay were a few families whose names live on, even though few remember their contribution. During the early twentieth century, they left us. The Haldon family began to withdraw in 1885 and had gone by 1914; the Cary family had been at Torre Abbey since 1662 but departed in 1930; Cockington's Mallocks had been here since 1654 but also sold their estate to the Torquay Corporation in 1932.

They left behind a legacy of streets and parks named after themselves and their family members. Note how many times we see Cary, Palk, Ridgeway, Mallock, Lisburn, Vaughan, Rawlyn, Shedden, and Hesketh in local place names.

Taking one example, Sir Lucius Cary, Second Viscount Falkland, died fighting for the King at Newbury during the Civil War in 1643. He is remembered in Falkland Road and Lucius Street. 

Even recently introduced names can cause bafflement. In December 1989 the Hellevoetsluis Way dual carriageway opened as a way to recognise Torbay’s twinning with the Dutch town. It’s another place name, but not even English this time, and means ‘Lock at the foot of the Helle’. Regardless of good intentions, it still causes pronunciation challenges for both residents and visitors.

If saying Hellevoetsluis has caused anybody any awkwardness, note that there’s someone in Holland at this very moment trying to pronounce ‘Paignton’.