St Marychurch Heritage Trail | Historic Walk in Torquay

Welcome to St Marychurch, one of Torquay’s oldest communities. This self-guided trail follows the village through civic life, schools, shops, industries, inns, memorials and churches, combining documented history with carefully identified local memories.

As you walk through the pedestrian precinct, look ahead for the neighbouring tower of St Mary the Virgin and the spire of Our Lady Help of Christians and St Denis. They remain visible landmarks during this part of the route, but are not a separate numbered stop.

Next: Continue to the Old Town Hall on the corner of Manor Road.
Continue to stop 2 →

Begin at the former Town Hall, opened in 1883 as St Marychurch’s purpose-built civic headquarters. It served local government before St Marychurch was absorbed into Torquay in 1900. The Grade II-listed building has since been converted into attractive flats, but its Italianate frontage still recalls the period when the village managed its own affairs.

The building continued serving local people long after its original civic role ended. One resident remembers going there to vote and taking part in small community activities such as table tennis. A covered bus shelter once stood alongside the Town Hall; it was later demolished and incorporated into the residential redevelopment.

Sources checked: Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society and the Torbay Council conservation appraisal. The voting, table-tennis and bus-shelter details are a resident’s personal memories.

Next: Return towards Fore Street and continue to Bygones.
Continue to stop 3 →

The 1930s building now occupied by Bygones formerly housed the Tudor Cinema and was used, with the parish hall, for church services after St Mary the Virgin was bombed in 1943. The neighbouring St Marychurch Post Office still trades on Fore Street today. Its premises formerly included the local sorting office, where one resident’s father worked as a postman. Barclays Bank was also part of this busy stretch of Fore Street, while nearby Tudor Chambers is now the head office of Darby & Darby Solicitors.

Ken and Patricia Cuming owned the local Post Office before acquiring the nearby former cinema. They transformed it into Bygones around their collections of railwayana and social history. A 27-ton steam engine named Patricia was installed through the front of the building, and Bygones opened to the public on 23 May 1987.

A resident remembers the former cinema being used as a carpet shop before it became Bygones; documentary confirmation of that intermediate use has not yet been found. Sources checked: Bygones’ official history, Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, the Post Office branch record, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and a published account of the Cumings selling their Post Office to acquire the cinema.

Next: Continue along Fore Street to Hampton Court and Abbey School.
Continue to stop 4 →

The castellated building set back from Fore Street began as Hampton House, the centre of a large estate that once extended from St Marychurch Road towards Babbacombe Downs, Oddicombe and land now occupied by the Model Village. Local research places the house in the 1820s and records Charles Kane Sivewright living here in 1829; the statutory Grade II listing dates the surviving building more cautiously to about 1840–50. Its battlements, crow-stepped gables and octagonal turreted porch give it the appearance of a small castle.

Charles Tayleur, the locomotive and engineering manufacturer associated with the Vulcan Foundry in Warrington, bought Hampton House in 1851. After his death, the house remained connected with the Tayleur family until Charles William Tayleur died in 1912. Solicitor Theodore Foster purchased Hampton House and its estate for £9,000 in 1913, planning a spacious Garden City-style development. The First World War interrupted that scheme, and Hampton House instead served as a convalescent home for New Zealand servicemen, with tents providing additional sleeping accommodation in its grounds.

During the 1920s the property was divided into Hampton House, Hampton Dene and Little Hampton, while the main house became Hampton Court School. By the 1930s and 1940s it educated girls up to 18 and boys up to 10, and at times accepted boarders. During air raids, senior girls were assigned younger children to collect with their gas masks and lead to shelter in the cellar. Several pupils were among those killed in the bombing of St Mary the Virgin Church in 1943.

Hampton Court School later became Abbey School. The listed building retains important interior features including its central mahogany staircase, panelled mahogany doors and grey or pink marble fireplaces. Construction of the St Marychurch bypass demolished Hampton Dene and Little Hampton and separated some former outbuildings from the main house. Hampton Close occupies the area associated with the old stables, while estate walls, road names and surviving buildings still preserve the Hampton story across this part of St Marychurch.

Sources checked: Historic England’s statutory list entry, Torbay Council’s St Marychurch Conservation Area Appraisal and Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society. The difference between the local 1820s date and Historic England’s 1840–50 assessment is retained because the precise construction history requires further documentary research.

Next: Return towards the pedestrian precinct and the Chilcote Memorial.
Continue to stop 5 →

This prominent obelisk commemorates Dr Herbert Nicholas Chilcote, a much-loved local physician who lived at Charlwood on Babbacombe Road from 1869 until his death in 1886, aged only 46.

Dr Chilcote served as Poor Law Medical Officer, public vaccinator and medical officer to local working-men’s clubs. He also treated poorer residents in their homes and at his surgery whether or not they could afford to pay. His devotion to people living in severe poverty earned him a reputation as “the friend of the poor.”

After Emma Keyse was murdered in 1884, Dr Chilcote examined her body and gave medical evidence at the coroner’s inquest into her death. John Lee was subsequently convicted of the murder and became known as “the man they could not hang.”

According to local historical research, public feeling following Dr Chilcote’s early death led local people to commission this memorial. Andrew Blackler’s St Marychurch marble works was engaged to make and erect it. Babbacombe Downs was reportedly considered first, but the monument was eventually placed at this prominent Fore Street crossroads.

The Grade II-listed memorial consists of a grey-and-pink polished obelisk on three steps, accompanied by three decorated cast-iron lamps. Historic England records the monument as grey and pink granite. Local research has suggested East Ogwell and Ashburton marbles, but that identification has not yet been independently confirmed.

Sources checked: Historic England’s statutory list entry, Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, Torbay Council’s conservation appraisal and Dr Chilcote’s surviving 1884 inquest deposition. The Blackler attribution, proposed Babbacombe Downs site and East Ogwell and Ashburton marble identification come from local research; the stone identification remains unconfirmed.

Next: Continue towards St Marychurch Road and St Marychurch Court.
Continue to stop 6 →

Opposite the Chilcote Memorial stood the steam-powered factory of the Royal Petitor Marble Works, part of an industry that carried St Marychurch stone far beyond Devon. John Woodley won a medal for a marble table at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The following year Prince Albert visited the works and placed an order for Osborne House, beginning the firm’s royal patronage. According to local historical research, the factory later became Sansom’s Garage and then the Barton Motor Company. During the Second World War the premises were used by the Bristol Aeroplane Company for wartime manufacturing, and after the war they were used to garage cars and coaches.

One resident remembers standing on his grandfather’s balcony and watching buildings on the former marble-works site being demolished, probably around 1979–80. The cleared ground remained a building site for a time and became an unofficial playground for local children before the General Accident offices were constructed. These details are preserved as oral history, and the exact demolition and construction dates still require confirmation from original planning or building-control records.

After General Accident left, its offices stood empty and increasingly neglected for more than a decade. They were demolished in 2013 and replaced by the present shopping and residential development, containing Sainsbury’s Local and other commercial premises with homes behind—another complete transformation of one of St Marychurch’s most important working sites.

Sources checked: Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, contemporary Royal Petitor Marble Works records and Torbay Council planning records. The demolition seen from the balcony, approximate 1979–80 date and children using the cleared site as a playground are one resident’s personal memories.

Next: Return towards Fore Street for Molloy’s at number 20.
Continue to stop 7 →

Today this familiar Fore Street building is Molloy’s, but generations of local people knew it as the Manor Hotel, later the Manor Inn or Manor Pub. In 1881–82 its innkeeper, Mr Taverner, became involved in a notable court dispute over local fishermen’s customary right to draw their boats onto Babbacombe Beach.

St Marychurch once had its own brewing industry. The St Marychurch Brewery developed behind the Palk Arms in the mid-nineteenth century and later traded as Greenslade Brothers. Plymouth Breweries acquired Greenslade’s business in 1925, but brewing at St Marychurch ceased in 1927. Plymouth Breweries was itself acquired by Courage in 1970, so the corporate connection continued long after local brewing had ended.

One resident remembers that his grandfather worked for Courage when the premises were still known as the Manor. The pub occupied the front of the property, while a lane at the side led to a Courage workshop behind it. This recollection describes the rear premises as a practical working area connected with the brewery company, not as the site of the former St Marychurch Brewery.

The rear of the premises later took on a very different role. Molloy’s developed a large covered beer garden used for live music, screenings, beer festivals and other community entertainment, turning the former working space into part of the pub’s social life.

Sources checked: contemporary reporting of the Keyse v Taverner dispute, the Plymouth Breweries archive held by The London Archives, Brewery History Society records and CAMRA’s current pub record. The grandfather’s employment, side-lane entrance and rear Courage workshop are an anonymous resident’s childhood memories.

Next: Continue along Fore Street to the Dolphin Inn at number 36.
Continue to stop 8 →

The Dolphin Inn at 36 Fore Street was formerly the Commercial Inn. An 1844 trade directory records Elizabeth Bradley running the Commercial at St Marychurch, confirming that the inn was established well before the village obtained its own formal civic buildings.

In 1866 St Marychurch established a Local Board of Health to manage the rapidly growing community. The Board met monthly at the Commercial Inn. Its recorded responsibilities included rates and accounts, footpaths, street lighting and “scavenging”—the Victorian term for organised waste collection and street cleansing.

Important decisions about everyday life in St Marychurch were therefore made inside the inn. The purpose-built Town Hall opened in November 1883, providing a council chamber, offices and public meeting rooms. The Commercial represents the earlier period when local government operated from the heart of village life.

The inn was later renamed the Dolphin. It remains a licensed public house at 36 Fore Street, maintaining the building’s long association with village social life.

Sources checked: an 1844 trade directory, Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, the history of St Marychurch Town Hall, Torbay Council licensing records and the Dolphin Inn’s current information. The precise date when the Commercial adopted the Dolphin name has not yet been established.

Next: Continue towards St Mary the Virgin on Church Road.
Continue to stop 9 →

The bombing of St Mary the Virgin on Sunday 30 May 1943 is one of the most painful events in St Marychurch’s history. This stop begins with the children and teachers who lost their lives, then tells the story of the hanging cross, the rebuilding of the church and the ancient carved font that survived.

The bombing — 30 May 1943

On Sunday 30 May 1943, during a German tip-and-run air raid, a bomb struck the parish church while children and teachers were gathered for Sunday school. Twenty-one children and three teachers were killed. Much of the church was reduced to rubble, making the attack one of the most painful events in St Marychurch’s history. The surviving west tower stood above the ruins, and the church was rebuilt between 1952 and 1956.

The loss is remembered within the church and at the children’s memorial in the churchyard extension. The memorial records the names and ages of the 21 children, ensuring that the story remains about the people whose lives were lost, not simply the destruction of a building.

The cross that remained hanging

In the shattered church, a large crucifix remained hanging beneath a broken arch with the sky visible around it. Contemporary newspaper reports drew attention to the extraordinary sight. The cross became an enduring local image of survival, remembrance and faith amid the devastation. At the 80th-anniversary commemoration, the church’s priest described it as remaining over the church and community “in defiance of the hatred of war.”

The ancient carved font

The church also preserves a rare survivor from its medieval predecessor: a richly carved stone font. It has often been called Saxon in local tradition. Historic England dates it to the 12th century, and it is generally described as Norman. Its figure scenes include people and animals, with one carving interpreted as a hunting scene. Surviving repeated rebuilding and the 1943 destruction, it provides a physical connection with worship in St Marychurch more than eight centuries ago.

Sources checked: the Diocese of Exeter’s 80th-anniversary account, Historic England’s statutory listing, Torbay Council’s St Marychurch conservation appraisal, the children’s memorial record and contemporary newspaper reporting. The description “Saxon font” is preserved as local tradition; Historic England dates the font to the 12th century.

Next: From the church area, continue to Lychgate Cottages at 87 Fore Street.
Continue to stop 10 →

Just beyond the church lychgate is a narrow lane transformed by local resident Sandi Jackson into one of St Marychurch’s most distinctive community gardens. Pots, planters, sunflowers, knitted figures, painted containers and seasonal displays turn an ordinary service lane into a place people stop to explore.

Sandi’s work is more than decoration. It shows what one resident, supported by neighbours and local bloom volunteers, can do to make a shared space welcoming and memorable. To many local people, Sandi has become something of a village legend — a reminder that care, persistence and imagination can change how a whole corner of a community feels.

In the 2025 South West in Bloom results, Lychgate Cottages received Level 5 “Outstanding” in the Area Neighbourhood Awards. Sandi also received the Special Award for Dedication to Community Gardening.

Sources checked: Torbay Council’s 2025 South West in Bloom results and the Babbacombe Bay Bloomers awards record. The Bruford Rose Bowl is recorded on the plaque displayed in the lane.

Next: Continue to the Crown & Sceptre at 2 Petitor Road.
Continue to stop 11 →

The Crown & Sceptre at 2 Petitor Road has served St Marychurch since at least the Victorian period. Nineteenth-century trade directories record William Eddles junior as its victualler, followed in later directories by licensees including members of the Turner family. A small brass trade token bearing the Crown & Sceptre and Eddles names also survives in collectors’ records, a reminder of the everyday transactions once made across its bar.

According to South Devon CAMRA, the pub’s best-documented modern chapter began in 1975, when Roy and Heather Wheeler took over. Their son David later continued the family stewardship. CAMRA records that the Wheelers ran the Crown for more than 40 years and that it appeared in the Good Beer Guide for 36 of those years. The pub became known for well-kept real ale, conversation, jazz and folk music, and its strong community following.

The Crown closed in 2020 but reopened under new management in 2022 following a major refurbishment. Although the old bar was replaced, its traditional room divisions and much of its character were retained. It remains a working local pub and entertainment venue, continuing a story that stretches back well over a century.

Sources checked: nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Devon trade directories held by the University of Leicester Special Collections, South Devon CAMRA’s account of the Wheeler family, CAMRA’s current pub record and the 2022 reopening announcement.

Next: Return to St Mary the Virgin churchyard and its lychgate.
Continue to stop 12 →

The covered gateway into St Mary the Virgin’s churchyard is called a lychgate. The name comes from an Old English word for a body. Traditionally, a coffin rested beneath such a gate while the priest met the funeral party before leading it into the church. It made the gateway a place of pause: the threshold between the busy village street and the burial ground.

A surviving newspaper report records that the original lychgate was built in the 1840s and had previously been restored about 80 years before the 1975 work. The later restoration followed a two-year community fundraising campaign begun by St Marychurch chemist Harry Franks, who noticed how badly the roof had deteriorated when it was illuminated at night. Residents raised £982, mostly through small donations, although one gift amounted to £250.

In 1975, local builder Henry Rice Keen’s firm was awarded the contract to rebuild the lychgate. Carpenter and joiner Denis Green carried out the work on the firm’s behalf, including new oak uprights and a new shingle roof. Henry—known locally as “Skipper”—ran a small St Marychurch building firm and trained local apprentices. The work was intended to be completed before the vicar, the Reverend T. P. Vokes-Dudgeon, left the parish at the end of the year, although progress depended on the weather.

This small corner holds several layers of St Marychurch history. Close to the lychgate lies the grave of Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter from 1830 to 1869. The church’s west tower, completed in 1877, was built as his memorial. That tower survived the bombing of 30 May 1943, when the rest of the church was devastated and 21 children and three teachers attending Sunday school were killed.

Beside the churchyard boundary stands St Marychurch’s granite First World War memorial. Its cross records 98 local people who lost their lives in the conflict, turning this entrance area into an important place of village remembrance as well as an approach to the church.

Sources checked: Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, Historic England’s listing for the church, and the War Memorials Online record. The construction and restoration details are confirmed by a contemporary newspaper clipping headed “Lychgate is given a facelift”, preserved locally; its publication code is G2075.

Next: Continue within the churchyard to the Memorial Lamp.
Continue to stop 13 →

The ornate cast-iron lamp in Fore Street is now known as the Leslie Lownds-Pateman Memorial Lamp. Local memory, however, shows that the lamp itself predates the memorial: one resident clearly remembers it standing there by the mid-1980s. This is important because Leslie Lownds-Pateman lived until 1998, meaning an existing village lamp must have been dedicated to him later.

The plaque on the lamp records that it was erected on the Strand for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887, then renovated and re-sited in 1978 when Fore Street was remade as a pedestrian shopping precinct. These dates are evidence carried by the object itself but have not yet been independently confirmed in an indexed documentary source. The Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society calls it the “Dolphin Street Lamp” and identifies it as Lownds-Pateman’s memorial.

Leslie Wescott Lownds-Pateman MBE was one of the area’s most energetic community champions and historians. He led the family firm associated with Devon Violets perfume, served the local traders’ and hoteliers’ association for more than 40 years and compiled two substantial pictorial histories of Babbacombe and St Marychurch. He received the MBE for community work in 1985 and became a Freeman of the Borough of Torbay in 1994. He also promoted the bypass that helped make the pedestrian shopping village possible.

The lamp also had a place in St Marychurch’s social life. An anonymous resident remembers a New Year’s Eve tradition in which people came out from the local pubs at midnight and danced around the lamp to welcome the new year. The custom appears to have faded, but recording it preserves the lamp as a gathering place rather than simply a piece of street furniture.

Sources checked: Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society, Babbacombe Bay Bloomers’ history of the precinct, and contemporary accounts of Leslie Lownds-Pateman’s civic work. The lamp’s plaque records its 1887 erection and 1978 renovation and re-siting; these dates have not yet been independently verified in an indexed source. The date when it was dedicated to Leslie Lownds-Pateman remains unconfirmed. Its presence by the mid-1980s and the New Year’s Eve dancing are preserved here as anonymous oral history.

Next: Leave the church area for Foxlands Walk and Chilcote Close.
Continue to stop 14 →

Foxlands Walk has long been a familiar pedestrian cut-through between the St Marychurch shopping precinct and Chilcote Close. For many local people it is a practical route rather than a formal attraction: shoppers use it to reach the public car park behind the village shops and to return to Fore Street on foot.

It is also a small shopping lane in its own right. The entrance sign photographed in August 2026 names Liberty Barbers, Lily’s Sweet Shop, Sian’s Hair Studio and Garden Retreat Café. Shop names and occupiers can change, but these independent premises make the cut-through feel like a continuation of the shopping village rather than simply a route to the car park.

The flowers are part of its character too. Walkers pass the colourful garden at The Stables and planted wall troughs cared for by local volunteers. Together with the small shopfronts and glimpses between the buildings, they make Foxlands Walk a pleasant and surprisingly scenic part of the route.

There is further parking at the lower end of Chilcote Close. From Foxlands Walk, turn right and continue down through Chilcote Close to follow the heritage loop towards the Model Village. The council-operated Hampton Avenue car park beside the Model Village makes this part of the route useful for people joining the walk by car, while visitors arriving by bus can begin from the shopping village.

Look out in Chilcote Close for another piece of working history: a large painted sign reading “Borough of Torquay Electricity Undertaking — 1936” survives on the brickwork of what is now Somers Lodge. In the mid-1930s Torquay Corporation was extending a municipal electricity system that served a remarkably wide area of South Devon. The sign preserves the building’s connection with that network, although its precise original function has not yet been confirmed.

The walkway also preserves a fragment of older working St Marychurch. Local environmental records note that Foxlands Walk was once the entrance to the village dairy, when yards and service premises operated behind the shops lining Fore Street.

The Shinner family were part of St Marychurch’s trading history. A 1911 directory records Frederick George Shinner, confectioner, at 54 Fore Street, while a later trade directory records his confectionery business at number 9. This suggests that the business moved as it developed, although the exact date of the move still requires confirmation. Family photographs show the Fore Street shop selling sweets, cakes and bread, together with an early motor delivery van remembered as carrying bread and confectionery around St Marychurch and neighbouring districts by about 1919.

Number 9 Fore Street is now occupied by Wash & Go. The Shinner business later passed to the Skinner family. According to the family account, a later generation rented a nearby yard from Gerald Skinner after he declined to sell it back.

The former bakery is easier to understand from Chilcote Close than from its modern shopfront. Looking back from the close gives walkers a clearer view of the old bakery building and shows how the shops at the front once connected with yards and working premises behind them.

Walking note: Foxlands Walk and Chilcote Close remain well-used access routes to parking, so walkers should watch for vehicles when emerging into the car-park areas.

Sources checked: Babbacombe Bay Bloomers, British Electricity History’s research on Torquay Corporation’s undertaking, and a current photograph of the surviving 1936 sign in Chilcote Close. The building’s exact original electrical function still requires archival confirmation. The three contemporary photographs were supplied by Friends of St Marychurch and record the entrance, shopfronts, planting and the 2026 Scarecrow Festival display. Business names and occupiers should be rechecked periodically. The route’s long use as a cut-through, parking information, identification of number 9, the Shinner and Skinner family succession, the rented yard and the building’s former use are preserved from local and anonymous family accounts. Exact dates and property boundaries still need checking against directories, deeds and historic maps.

Next: Continue towards Hampton Avenue and the Model Village.
Continue to stop 15 →

The heritage loop finishes at the Model Village, on the edge of the old Hampton House estate in St Marychurch. Before the attraction was created, this was farm and allotment land belonging to the Hampton estate. Local history records that remnants of the former farm buildings and estate walls could still be recognised near the site after the bypass and later development transformed the surrounding landscape.

The attraction was the vision of Tom Dobbins, born in Southport in 1917. After serving at Dunkirk during the Second World War and being decorated by King George VI, he pursued his ambition to create one of Britain’s finest model villages. His first opened in Southport in 1956. He began discussing a Torbay attraction in 1961, and the present site was chosen because its natural sloping valley—and its own spring and stream—could become part of the miniature landscape.

The Model Village opened on 12 April 1963. Its buildings were generally created at one-twelfth scale. The original idea was not to reproduce one real town, but to present an imaginary and idealised version of English life: farms, country houses, parks, lakes and waterfalls set among carefully maintained planting, followed later by a contrasting modern town. By 1965 there were nearly 300 model buildings and almost 5,000 miniature figures.

It continued growing with the country it portrayed. By the beginning of the 1980s there were nearly 400 buildings, more than 6,000 figures and illuminations using around 10,000 miniature bulbs. Humorous and topical scenes—including the famous UFO and the deliberately misspelled “Wombley Stadium”—became part of its character. Its gardens received a special Britain in Bloom award in 1985, and its 25th anniversary in 1988 was marked by twinning with Madurodam, the celebrated miniature city in the Netherlands.

Later additions have included Merrivale Castle and its animated fire-breathing dragon, the Royal Crescent, Shakespeare’s Globe, crazy golf, the indoor Mythical Kingdom and European Tiny Towns. New models and jokes continue to be introduced, while some members of the modelling, gardening and maintenance team have worked there since the 1980s. This combination of craft, horticulture, engineering and humour explains why the attraction has endured for more than six decades.

A note on the name: this trail calls the attraction “the Model Village” because its site is in St Marychurch, on the former Hampton estate. The most direct approach is through St Marychurch and along Hampton Avenue.

Getting here: the attraction’s own visitor directions identify St Marychurch as the closest bus stop, only about a three-to-four-minute walk away. Visitors should get off in St Marychurch and follow the shopping village and pedestrian route towards Hampton Avenue.

The adjacent Hampton Avenue car park is owned and operated by Torbay Council and serves the wider area; it is not owned by the Model Village. Together with Chilcote Close car park across the road, it provides a useful shared arrival point for the attraction, the shops and this heritage walk. Drivers should follow the brown signs because vehicle access to the car park is from St Marychurch Road rather than the no-entry side of Hampton Avenue.

Sources checked: the Model Village’s official history and visitor directions, Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society’s account, ITV’s 50th-anniversary report, and Torbay Council’s Hampton Avenue parking information. Opening times, admission and bus services can change and should be checked directly before visiting.

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