The Torquay Top Hat
If we look at images from Victorian Torquay, it's noticeable that everyone wore a hat. And for much of the century men wore a specific hat, for all occasions, at any time of day. This was the t…
Kevin Dixon(Author)
The Torquay Muff
We have a couple of 1870 prints entitled 'The Strand';' and 'Torquay Morning Promenade in the Paignton Road'. Both these street scenes show women using hand muffs. As seen in these two images, a m…
Torquay’s Promenading Parasol
This one is about the secret language of Torquay's promenading parasol. First, a definition. A parasol is not an umbrella. A parasol shades users from the sun; while an umbrella protects the user …
Tuscan Torquay
This is about Tuscan Torquay; and why we decided to build mock Italian church bell towers across our town. In 1862 Charles Dickens wrote, "Torquay is a pretty place... a mixture of Hastings and Tun…
Making Torquay’s Middle Class: Torre’s Constitutional Club
Just next to Torquay Police Station in Torre is an unusual four-storey building. This is the old Torre Conservative Club and it has an important place in Torquay's history.It was originally a Const…
Torquay as a Woman’s Town
Sybil Fawlty really ran Fawlty Towers. She was a far more effective manager than her husband, handled crises calmly, and she knew that the hotel was there to generate an income, rather than to at…
Torbay’s Heritage
Torbay's Heritage Interpretation Framework has just been published. 'A Haven Through Time’ uses the eight themes of the Heritage Strategy as a framework for organisations and individuals to interpre…
How Torquay Votes
During the nineteenth century a few families transformed a collection of rural hamlets into the richest town in England. By the early twentieth century, however, the political and economic authority…
Torbay welcomes back the Street Pastors
Torbay's hospitality industry has suffered due to the pandemic but now venues are about to open on June 21st and a very busy summer is expected.A familiar and much missed pre-Covid presence on our s…
Torbay’s Guerrilla Golf
Torquay has Jungle Journey Adventure Golf, Paignton has Pirates Bay Adventure Golf, and there's Crazy Golf at Goodrington. And, at one time, many hotels boasted a synthesis of concrete and felt whic…
Torquay: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”
"Lo! time shall come, when on yon throng’d paradeShall groups assemble, swains and many a maid,And elder dames and sires, in converse gay,Breathing sweet health fresh-wafted from the bayAnd yonder h…
What was Torquay’s St Michael’s Chapel actually for?
What was Torquay's St Michael's Chapel actually for? Over the years it has been described as: a sea mark; a light house; a place for lighting a warning fire beacon; the abode of a hermit; a place o…
Torquay, “an imposter, a delusion and a snare”
By 1870 there were 48 places classified as seaside resorts in a halo around Britain; but not all were the same. Torquay, along with Eastbourne, Bexhill and Frinton, wanted to preserve the image of a…
Torquay’s Rifle Volunteers March Out
On January 14th, 1858, the French Emperor Napoleon III was attacked in his capital by a gang of assassins who hurled three small bombs at his carriage. The Emperor escaped unharmed but eight imperia…