The Hermit’s Ghost appears to comfort Rosalind in the Chapel. Image by Andrew Thomas
After many decades of neglect, Torquay’s Chapel Hill Woods is getting the attention it truly deserves.
Community volunteers have long championed the Woods as a special place and now the ‘Health and Happiness in our Historic Gardens’ project is further encouraging residents to visit and appreciate the area. The aim is to improve our urban parks by connecting more people with their local heritage and offering opportunities to enjoy and benefit from these assets.
The project is focussing on two historic parks, Torquay’s Chapel Hill Woods and Paignton’s Victoria Park. These have been prioritised due to their urban locations, their potential and a reputation that could be improved.
To find out what people understand these parks to be, and to discover how we can make improvements, we need to know why we visit and value these sites, and to find ways we can encourage more use. To follow up some in-person engagements with users, an online survey is taking place which will then inform a funding application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Volunteers in medieval attire offer open days at Torquay’s historic chapel
We know, for example, that local residents have a special affection for Chapel Hill Woods and, at its centre, St Michael’s Chapel. Regular open days always have a good turnout with volunteers, often in medieval attire, giving free tours.
Chapel Hill Woods has long held a fascination for both locals and visitors, and one question often asked is about the folklore of the park. Many residents recall tales of the uncanny associated with both the Chapel and the surrounding woodland.
The most well-known legend of Chapel Hill Woods is told in the book Legends of Torquay, published in 1850, and repeated in the 1930 book Historical Survey of Torquay by Arthur Charles Ellis. Elizabeth Goudge then used the story as the basis for her 1950 novel Gentian Hill.
The story is of a ship running aground on Abbey Sands during a storm. All on board are lost except one man who was saved by the canons of Torre Abbey. He decides as a way of giving thanks to devote his life to God and to live out his life as a hermit. As his home he builds a chapel on the hill where he can see the place where his ship sank.
Three hundred years later, the story goes, a young man arrives at the chapel, falls asleep, and is visited by the hermit in a dream, who tells the young man he will one day be grateful to the chapel’s builder. Time passes and the young man falls in love with a woman named Rosalind. They often discuss his dream as they sit near the chapel, then one day he has to leave and is not expected to return for three years.
Rosalind visits the chapel every year on the date he left. In the third year, Torquay is again hit by a severe storm. Arriving at the chapel at night, she sees a light burning and there is an old man inside, whom she recognises as the hermit’s ghost. He tells her that her lover is in danger. Together they go to the beach, where they find his lifeless body washed ashore. They carry him to a nearby house where he slowly recovers. The hermit’s spirit then promises the reunited lovers that visitors to the chapel will forever receive comfort, forgiveness and hope.
The hermit legend seems to be yet another of those Victorian Gothic tales that were created to intrigue and entertain visitors and residents. This was made especially possible as we don’t know who built the chapel and what it was for.
What we do know is that the chapel dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, presumably being constructed and operated under the supervision of the nearby Abbey.
Chapels aren’t uncommon, around 4,000 chapels were built between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. On the other hand, the building’s uneven floor is what makes St Michael’s out of the ordinary.
Someone spent a great deal of time, money, and effort on constructing the chapel and then not levelling the floor. This has led to the proposal that the summit was the site of a religious vision; the chapel then being constructed around this event. Hence, the limestone was left untouched as this was sacred ground.
Extensive wear on the limestone floor seems to have been caused by large numbers of people visiting the building. We consequently assume that this was a very important place.
At one time, abbeys, priories, churches, and chapels, associated with a religious apparition, were a feature of the English landscape. Torquay’s chapel was therefore one of many, likely a once-famous place of pilgrimage.
However, between 1536 and 1540, Henry VIII ordered every abbey and priory in England, some 800 in total, to be forcibly closed. As many as 14,000 monks, abbots, nuns and friars, as well as great numbers of monastic servants and tenants, had their lives disrupted. Two-hundred people were executed for opposing what became known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Torre Abbey was of particular interest to Henry’s commissioners. By 1536 the Abbey’s annual income made it the wealthiest of all the Premonstratensian houses in England.
The canons surrendered in 1539 and that same year a 21-year lease of the site and demesne was acquired by Sir Hugh Pollard.
The closing of the Abbey was only part of the English Reformation. Following the accession of Edward VI, royal injunctions ordered the removal of all images from English churches. Such iconoclasm caused the loss of baptismal fonts, stained-glass windows, depictions on walls, and crosses depicting the crucifixion.
The ‘Health and Happiness in our Historic Gardens’ project invites residents to suggest how Chapel Hill Woods and Victoria Park could be enhanced
The 1530s and 1540s then led to the near elimination of traditional devotion, including the closing of many chapels and the ending of pilgrimages and penance. And so, Torquay’s chapel was removed from community memory. Then the building was slowly lost from view by the much later Victorian planting of trees across the hill. Today only glimpses of this one-time important construction can be seen as you leave Torre and head towards Torre Station.
So, how do we once again celebrate Chapel Hill as the special place it once was and encourage residents to visit and appreciate the area?
To share your views and suggestions about the present and possible future of both Chapel Hill Woods and Victoria Park, there’s a short online survey at:
https://www.torbay.gov.uk/council/consultations/health-and-happiness-in-our-historic-gardens/
