Devon history: index

It never quite registers with me that Clare and I have now been living in Devon for nearly twenty years. I had a reminder this week with my decision to officially retire as website maintainer for the Devon History Society. What I didn't realise - until looking at the Wayback Machine - was that I've been doing that for 15 years. New blood is long overdue! During that time, and particularly since 2010, I find I've also written many more Devon history posts than I realised, here at JSBlog. While they're findable via the devhist label in the sidebar, readers may find the following explicit compendium of interest.

The posts cover a mix of topographic, pictorial  and literary subjects - many spinning off from mining 19th century book sources, or else researching observations during walks - with a particular focus on historical aspects of Devon's southern coast, from Brixham eastward as far as the Axmouth Undercliff. Enjoy!

2015

• Ferny Bank House of Rest for Women in Business - about a 19th century venture that provided inexpensive holidays in Babbacombe for blue-collar women workers.
• Lyon's Holt well revealed - station platform cleanup at St James Park reveals what's probably one of Exeter's most significant wells.
• Thomas Dalling Barleé in Dawlish and elsewhere - the life of a minor 19th century poet who spent his early career as an attorney in Dawlish.
• South Devon Railway: 1844 NIMBY list  - an exploration of people and places relating to objections to Brunel's South Devon Railway route.
• Agnes Ibbetson, Exmouth botanist  - plant physiologist and polymath: the most prolifically-published female researcher on botany of the early 19th century.
• The Beauties of the Shore and bogus quotations  - how the Colyton schoolmaster DM Stirling co-opted quotations for his regional guide.
• The Temple and Tower at Exmouth - the history of two 19th century classical follies.
• Memorials of Exmouth - a classic "scrapbook" of Exmouth historical material.
• The South Devon Coast: #1 of 3 - the illustrated travelogue of the prolific travel writer and illustrator Charles G Harper.
• The South Devon Coast: #2 of 3 - continuing Harper's tour.
• The South Devon Coast: #3 of 3 - from the coast of the South Hams to Plymouth.
• ATURFUQIL: philanthropy funded by snake oil - the somewhat darker side of the origins of a patent remedy that funded philanthropy in Shaldon.
• Latin at Anstey's Cove  - scholarly humour that attached to a tea shed near Torquay.
• Cliff and Beach at Branscombe: review  - Barbara Farquharson & Sue Dymond's book on the history of an East Devon cliff landscape.
• Branscombe: "curious rather than beautiful" petrifactions - exploring references to a forgotten fad for decorative petrified moss.
• Labrador Bay and its Tea Gardens  - the history of a forgotten coastal leisure and holiday venue near Shaldon Ness.
• Major General Chermside's misadventures in Shaldon - fraught times in Shaldon, as recorded in a resident's poetry.
• Shell Cove - development? - history and topography of a little-visited piece of coast near Dawlish.
• Besley's Views in Devonshire #1 - a pleasant series of topographic prints from Henry Besley's Exeter-published Views in Devonshire (c. 1861) - South Devon coast.
• Besley's Views in Devonshire #2 - from Plymouth to the North Devon coast, then south via Tiverton to East Devon.

2014

• The thankful old lady of Topsham - from Elizabeth Jane Brabazon's 1866 Exmouth & its Environs, an account of some less than successful side-excursions.
• Stephen Reynolds in Sidmouth - a short biography, bibliography, and some images relating to this complex author and social reformer.
• Topsham church records - some online Topsham-related source material that could be of considerable use to researchers.
• False books at Killerton - amusingly titled false books hiding doors and cupboards at Killerton House.
• Langstone Cliff - civilised lunch and a missing elephant - exploring the history of an interesting coastal feature at Dawlish Warren.
• Langstone Rock - to the smugglers' caves (perhaps) - a closer look at the hidden side of Langstone Rock.
• Littlecombe Shoot: down among the plats - visiting an unusal 'undercliff' between Sidmouth and Branscombe.
• Chimney Rock - in tthe Axmouth-Lyme landslip, a crag in guidebooks for 200 years
• Weston House: a ruined Devon villa - the extant remains of John Stuckey's Grecian villa, ruined in a fire nearly two centuries ago.
• The Freemasons' Hall, Brent Lodge, Topsham - photographs from the rare open day of an unusual Topsham venue.
• Legend Land: another Barham - a couple of pleasant books of regional folklore originally from Great Western Railway pamphlets.
• Two Devon romances - two little-known literary works, by Thomas Hardy and John Galsworthy, with Devon settings.
• Elberry Cove - marine curiosity - accounts of unusual offshore springs between Brixham and Paignton.
• Invasion Exmouth, 189— - Fred T Jane's 1895 future-war novel Blake of the "Rattlesnake" takes European naval conflict to Devon.
• The Shapters - street names and Exeter/Topsham worthies.
• Devon: its Moorlands, Streams & Coasts - a gallery of the pleasant colour plates from Lady Rosalind Northcote's 1908 illlustrated account.
• Ropes of sand: a Teignmouth penance - the inexplicable ghostly fate of Sir Warwick Hele Tonkin of Teignmouth.
• The Dread Wrecker Featherstone - more South-West legends of posthumous torment.
• Imaginary prison and an elephant portfolio: more on Foulston - a rather defensive segment from The public buildings erected in the West of England.
•  Building the Devonport Column - Foulston's ingenious method for building this landmark tower without scaffolding.
• Topsham: roads not taken - some interesting historical images of planned schemes never carried out.
• Bones beneath Brixham - the history of two Brixham caverns reveals a sea-change in styles of investigation.
• Sea Lawn Gap: déjà vu at Dawlish - the long-standing consequences of a sea wall building decision.
• Exmouth Battery exposed - a look at remnants of the 1860s Exmouth Artillery Battery revealed by storm erosion.
• Parson's Tunnel and The Ocean Sleuth - a 1915 crime thriller takes its hero into Brunel's railway tunnels.
• Coleridge, Pixies' Parlour, and invented tradition - the stories and history connected with a sandstone cave in the river cliffs of the Otter.
• Salutation Inn revisited - a rare 1941 novel and its connection with a Topsham hotel and a little-known artist.
• The Three Old Maids of Lee - the verse and song associated with Old Maid's Cottage, Lee, near Ilfracombe.

2013

• London Devonian Year Book 1913-1915 - online, another rich lode of Devon-related historical material.
• Wigzell's Spiral Fluted Nails - the unusual industry and inventions behind a well-known Topsham house name.
• Seeking details: Devonport "Hindoo" Calvinist Chapel - an introduction to the demolished Mount Zion Chapel "built in the fantastic Hindoo style" in John Foulston's 19th century development of Devonport.
• Foulston's "Hindoo" chapel, Devonport  - a closer look at a source, John Foulston's The public buildings erected in the West of England.
• The Dolbury Dragon - tracking back a dragon myth relating to a hill fort at Killerton.
• Killerton: quorema and knuckle-bones - Victorian curries; an odd floor in a bear's prison; and other history.
• Legends of Torquay and nearby - concerning some mid-1800s books of made-up legends.
• "For older ones there's the Madeira Walk" - a piece of Victorian doggerel about Exmouth.
• The Wiles of the Wicked - William Le Queux's 1900 mystery thriller partly set not far from Littleham, near Exmouth.
• "Make of thee a city" - the suspiciously short paper trail of a Topsham verse regularly attributed to the Duke of Monmouth.
• Strange and wonderful propaganda - Jacob Seley's ghostly encounter that smells of propaganda commemorating the five-year anniversary of the Bloody Assize.
• Sherbrook now - a modern and historical glimpse of a now-overgrown chine (a coastal ravine) near Budleigh.
• Edward Edwards - troubled library pioneer - the anonymous author of an Exmouth account tracks to a talented but socially maladaptive librarian.

2012

• Blue pill - wrong Kingsley - the Kingsley brothers and references to a highly toxic remedy.
• Phillpotts censorship drama! - the ultimately slight story of the censorship of Eden Phillpotts' 1912 Dartmoor-based tragic melodrama The Secret Woman.
• London Devonian Year Book 1910 - online, a rich lode of Devon-related source material.
• Drake window: Furlong - in Topsham, the last commissioned stained-glass work of Maurice Drake.
• Maurice Drake and WO2 - a thriller about mineral smuggling leads to the Exeter author, artist and glass authority Maurice Drake.
• Around Red Devon - a 1930s sailing account by a writer better known as one of the most eminent psychologists of the 20th century.
• A Devon Estuary, by HM Tomlinson - an evocative account from the 1922 Waiting for Daylight.

2011 

• Downman's Infancy - a 1776 verse treatise on babycare, which begins with lines in praise of Dawlish. 
• The Oaks of A la Ronde - the theological-political stipulation, concerning Judaism and a grove of oaks, in the will of Jane Parminter of Exmouth.
• Mrs Partington and her mop: Victorian meme - the recurring allusions to a probably apocrypal Sidmouth lady who tried in vain to sweep back the sea.
• The wreck of the Tehwija - an account of a 1907 shipwreck at Orcombe Point, Exmouth.
• Fern-dom - the mid-1800s fern-collecting obsession - pteridomania - that had a particular focus on Devon.
• RHD Barham and Dawlish - the poet behind the classic description of the red cliffs of East Devon as being like "anchovy sauce spread upon toast".

2010

• Parsons unknown - a regional legend traces to a literary origin
• In search of the ochidore - an odd word from a spelling bee tracks to Charles Kingsley's 1855 Westward Ho!.

These and future Devon history topics at JSBlog can be collectively accessed via the label devhist.

- Ray