Place:Torquay, Devon, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia Torquay is a seaside town in Devon, England, and is part of the unitary authority area of Torbay. It lies 18 miles (29 km) south of the county town of Exeter and 28 miles (45 km) east-north-east of Plymouth, on the north of Tor Bay, adjoining the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay and across from the fishing port of Brixham on the south side. In the 2011 UK Census, Torquay's population was 65,245, about half of that of the whole of Torbay. The town's economy, like Brixham's, was initially based upon fishing and agriculture, but in the early 19th century Torquay began to develop into a fashionable seaside resort, initially frequented by members of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars while the Royal Navy anchored in the bay. Later, as the town's fame spread, it was popular with the crème de la crème of Victorian society. Renowned for its healthful climate, the town earned the nickname of the English Riviera and favourable comparisons to Montpellier in France.

Tormoham

The first major building in Torquay was Torre Abbey, a Premonstratensian monastery founded in 1196. From this developed the settlement of Tormoham which eventually morphed into Torquay after the coming of the railway in 1848.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Tormoham from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1871-72:

"TOR-MOHAM, or Tor-Mohun, a parish in Newton-Abbot [registration] district, Devon; statistically identical with Torquay town. Acres, 1,560. Real property, £83,254; of which £851 are in gasworks. Population in 1851: 11,474; in 1861: 16,419. Houses: 2,183 The increase of population arose from improvements by land-proprietors, and from advantages afforded for erection of houses.

"The manor belonged to the Mohuns, passed to the Ridgways and the Carys; and belongs now to Sir L. Palk, Bart. Tor abbey was founded in the time of Henry II., by W. de Briwere, for Premonstratensian monks; possessed very rich revenues; was given, at the dissolution, to the Carys; underwent changes and additions, transmuting it into a mansion; and is still represented by considerable portions of the transmuted building, and by an interesting gateway.

"The living is a [perpetual] curacy, united with Cockington, in the diocese of Exeter. Value: £190. Patron: C H. Mallock, Esq. The church stands about a mile W of Torquay, and is ancient. The rectory of Upton, and the [perpetual] curacies of Torquay-St. John, Torquay-Trinity, Torquay-St. Luke, and Torwood are separate benefices. See Torquay and Torwood."

There are very few sources listed in WeRelate for Tormorham parish registers and censuses in the 19th century, under any spelling. This may be an accidental omission. The FamilySearch Wiki article on Tormohun (note spelling) states that indices of parish registers of christenings are available online for the period 1637-1739, and marriages for 1637-1643. These are usually called IGI records. Full parish records are not available. Census records from 1841 to 1911 are available online.

History

the text in this section is condensed from a section of an article in Wikipedia

Torquay remained a minor settlement until the Napoleonic wars, when Torbay was used as a sheltered anchorage by the Channel Fleet, and relatives of officers often visited Torquay. The mild climate (for the UK) attracted many visitors who considered the town a convalescence retreat where they could recover from illness away from the cold and cloudy winters of more northerly or easterly locations. The population of Torquay grew rapidly from 838 in 1801, to 11,474 in 1851.

The second phase in the expansion of Torquay began when Torre railway station was opened on 18 December 1848. The improved transport connections resulted in rapid growth at the expense of nearby towns not on the railways of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The more central Torquay railway station was opened on 2 August 1859 with views of the sea from the platforms. After the growth of the preceding decades, Torquay was granted municipal borough status in 1872. Previously regarded as a convalescence retreat, Torquay began to encourage summer visitors, and 1902 saw the first advertising campaign to market Torquay to summer tourists.

Torquay Tramways operated electric street trams from 1907. They were initially powered by the unusual Dolter stud-contact electrification so as not to disfigure the town with overhead wires. Conversion to overhead-line supply came in 1911 as did the extension into Paignton in 1911. The network was closed in 1934.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution's Torquay Lifeboat Station was at the Ladies Bathing Cove from 1876 until 1923. A second lifeboat was kept at the harbour from 1917 until 1928. Torquay was regarded as a "Spa Town" after the Marine Spa was built on Beacon Hill near the harbour. Originally called the "Bath Saloons complex", it had an open air tide-filled swimming bath. The complex was opened in 1853 after Beacon Hill headland was dynamited to make space for it. Charles Dickens was said to have made readings there. In the 1900s a ballroom and a new sea water-filled swimming pool were built.

During World War I, military hospitals were sited in Torquay – many survivors from the Battle of Gallipoli recuperated in the town – and it was used as a troop staging area. In September 1915 King George V and Queen Mary visited. After the war the Great Western Railway launched an advertising campaign to attract tourists, and this helped the town grow into a major south coast resort.

During World War II Torquay was regarded as safer than the towns of southeast England, and played host to evacuees from the London area. The town did however suffer minor bomb damage during the war, mainly from planes dumping excess loads after participating in the Plymouth Blitz. The last air raid on Torquay took place on 29 May 1944 shortly before the D-Day landings in June. In the months leading up to D-Day, thousands of US Army personnel arrived with the 3204th Quartermaster Service Company and were billeted in the suburbs of Chelston and Cockington. During Operation Overlord more than 23,000 men of the American 4th Infantry Division departed Torquay for Utah Beach.

Torquay was the home of the writer Agatha Christie, who was born in the town and lived there during her early years.

[edit] Governance Torquay is the administrative headquarters of Torbay, which was created in 1968 as a County with Torquay being the county town. In 1974 it was returned to Devon County Council control. Torbay was formed from the amalgamation of the Boroughs of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham. Torbay was again made a unitary authority on 1 April 1998 when it became responsible for its own affairs. For local elections Torbay is divided into 11 wards, 7 of them in Torquay itself. The town is made up of a number of small settlements that amalgamated over time into the town of Torquay. The town's historic core consists of Tormoham, Wellswood, The Warberries, Upton and Ellacombe and is based upon what were once the holdings of the Palk family. In 1900 Chelston and Livermead (part of the Cockington estate owned by the Mallocks) were annexed by the town and this was followed by the absorption of the former borough of St. Marychurch. (In this period St. Marychurch covered Plainmoor, Watcombe, Babbacombe and Kingskerswell.) In 1928 the Mallocks' last holdings in Cockington were integrated into the town borders. Torquay expanded throughout the century leading to the development of Shiphay, Hele Village, Barton and, since the 1990s, "The Willows", and from 2010 onwards "Edginswell" and into Kingskerswell giving the town its current layout.

A map of the main Torbay part of Torquay depicting most of its various regions in the Torbay area. The map omits half of Livermead and all of Edginswell, Kingskerswell and Maidencombe. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Research Tips

(revised Jul 2021)

• Ordnance Survey Map of Devonshire North and Devonshire South are large-scale maps covering the whole of Devon between them. They show the parish boundaries when Rural Districts were still in existence and before the mergers of parishes that took place in 1935 and 1974. When expanded the maps can show many of the small villages and hamlets inside the parishes. These maps are now downloadable for personal use but they can take up a lot of computer memory.
• GENUKI has a selection of maps showing the boundaries of parishes in the 19th century. The contribution from "Know Your Place" on Devon is a huge website yet to be discovered in detail by this contributor.

• Devon has three repositories for hands-on investigation of county records. Each has a website which holds their catalog of registers and other documents.

• the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter
• the Northern Record Office at Barnstaple
• the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office at Plymouth which is independent of the other two.

• There is, however, a proviso regarding early records for Devon. Exeter was badly hit in a "blitz" during World War II and the City Library, which then held the county archives, was burnt out. About a million books and historic documents went up in smoke. While equivalent records--particularly wills--are quite easy to come by for other English counties, some records for Devon and surrounding counties do not exist.

• Devon Family History Society Mailing address: PO Box 9, Exeter, EX2 6YP, United Kingdom. The society has branches in various parts of the county. It is the largest Family History Society in the United Kingdom. The website has a handy guide to each of the parishes in the county and publishes the registers for each of the Devon dioceses on CDs.

• This is the home page to the GENUKI Devon website. It has been updated since 2015 and includes a lot of useful information on each parish.
• Devon has a Online Parish Clerk (OPC) Project which can be reached through GENUKI. Only about half of the parishes have a volunteer contributing local data. For more information, consult the website, especially the list at the bottom of the homepage.

• The FamilySearch Wiki provides a similar information service to GENUKI. An index of parishes leads to notes and references for each parish.

• Brett Langston's list of Devon Registration Districts and parishes within each registration district from 1837 to the present can indicate where to find details of civil registration entries since the process began in England.

• Magna Britannia, Volume 6 by Daniel Lysons and Samuel Lysons. A general and parochial history of the county. Originally published by T Cadell and W Davies, London, 1822, and placed online by British History Online. This is a volume of more than 500 pages of the history of Devon, parish by parish. It is 100 years older than the Victoria County Histories available for some other counties, but equally thorough in its coverage. Contains information that may have been swept under the carpet in more modern works.

• There is a cornucopia of county resources at Devon Heritage. Topics are: Architecture, Census, Devon County, the Devonshire Regiment, Directory Listings, Education, Genealogy, History, Industry, Parish Records, People, Places, Transportation, War Memorials. There are fascinating resources you would never guess that existed from those topic titles. (NOTE: There may be problems reaching this site. One popular browser provider has put a block on it. This may be temporary, or it may be its similarity in name to the Devon Heritage Centre at Exeter.)