In 1862 Charles Dickens wrote, "Torquay is a pretty place... a mixture of Hastings and Tunbridge Wells and little bits of the hills about Naples". Ruskin would carry on the theme and call Torquay,…

It has been said that Catholic Torquay came to an end in 1539 when Torre Abbey surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This led to a wide scale demolition of…

This is the story of the 'Torquay War' of 1888.During that year Torquay experienced a sustained challenge to established authority which became an important issue for the entire country.This struggle …

If you enjoy and are passionate about History, local Heritage, literature and culture, then why not seize the opportunity to study History with English at University Centre South Devon (UCSD). COVID…

During the latest lockdown it's good to hear that the Bay's musicians are still out there, hard at work creating eclectic music based on a wide range of local themes.It's particularly good news to fin…

For a few years the motorised charabanc was a regular sight on Torquay's streets with locals and tourists being transported by these ‘wagons with benches’.Charabancs, a corruption of the French char à…

 They look almost prehistoric. A cruciform black silhouette with wings resembling a broken umbrella. This is the cormorant, a bird familiar to the Bay.The name is thought to originate from the Latin w…

 World War I was a prolonged, brutal, and costly conflict; and was followed by a virulent pandemic which killed even more people – estimates vary from 50 to 70 million worldwide.Beyond the days i…

During the 1920s people in Torbay started taking their clothes off. They had decided that they wanted to change the colour of their bodies. Back in 381AD the Roman Emperor Theodosius made Christi…

       Devon took its name from the county's original Iron Age inhabitants, the Dumnonii 'Celts'. This was the tribe whose homeland was Dumnonia, the area covered by present-day Devon and Cornwall, al…

The 1911 music hall song 'You can do a lot of things at the seaside that you can't do in town' describes the attractions of the resorts:"Bashful little maidens, modest as can be,Like to have a nice sp…

"‘Once upon a time there were three little sisters,’ the Dormouse began in a great hurry; ‘and they lived at the bottom of a well . . .’ ‘What did they live on?’ said Alice, who always took a great in…

This is the story of how two gigantic Torquay paintings ended up in a Pittsburg museum with the assistance of Andrew Lloyd Weber. St. John’s church started in 1823 as a chapel-of-ease to the parish…

    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 extinct beasts in their ne…