Brixham People
Neil Bell; author of popular novels and a journalist lived in Berry Head Road.
Samuel Calley; ship owner and timber merchant who lived in New Road. He is believed to have used iron in his paint as a preservative against salt water corrosion earlier than Wolston. His works were in New Road and in 1870 he was offering "Genuine Torbay and Chemical Paint".
Roland Daniel; author of detective stories and romances; he lived in Castor Road until his death (also "Sonia Anderson" as a pseudonym).
Philip Ffrost; born in 1657, he emigrated to America where he grew up, and later founded Brixham in Maine [however, the name does not appear on modern maps].
Robert Graves, author; he lived at Galmpton during World War 2 at "Vale Farm House" (1942-43).
Jabez Lake; the Brixham fisherman-poet, was born at Newton Abbot in 1859. At the age of ten, both his parents died and he was put under the care of Thomas Viccars of Torquay, who educated him with a view to him having a career in the Navy. Unfortunately, he was too short and so he was forced to become an errand boy in Torquay for twelve months. He then moved to Brixham where he became apprenticed to John James, and served with him until he was 21 as a trawler-man on a Brixham fishing smack. He wrote his poems whilst at sea, the first being "The loss of the Pilgrim" when only 15 years of age. By the age of 36 he had written 35 poems.
Henry Francis Lyte; Lyte came from a distinguished Somerset family; his ancestors, the Lyte Kitsons, were well-known as scholars, writers, botanists and genealogists. His father was a captain in the Army but was also the author of a History of Jersey. Born in Scotland and educated in Ireland (including time at Trinity College, Dublin), he was ordained into the Church of England where his first curacy brought him to England, to Marazion in Cornwall. He first came to Brixham in 1824 with his Methodist wife. She remained one all her life and worshipped at Brixham Wesleyan Chapel. He did not appear to be a good choice for Brixham with its robust fishermen, he was a writer of poetry and a frail consumptive.
According to one biographer, a Mrs Burns rented the Military Hospital and opened it as a rest house in 1831. Mrs Lyte, who had been ill, went there to recuperate with her family for a fortnight. They were so happy that they determined to obtain possession of it and they moved in sometime early in 1833. The Lytes were certainly there in the March as workmen were laying out the grounds for them. A year later he "offered £1,125 to purchase 21 acres of Berry Head which after the war had been let on lease". This was almost certainly the adjacent lands nearby only (and known as Berry Head Farm) and that Lyte only leased the Hospital from the Board of Ordnance. There is a family letter which indicates he paid £10 a year and was subject to three months notice "if there was a resumption for military purposes". When it became his residence and moved in, each wing consisted of four wards, two on the ground floor and two on the first. The Lyte family occupied the west wing, the east being given over to the pupils he was forced to take. His stipend as vicar of All Saints' was only £120 a year, not sufficient to pay even a curate. His pupils included Lord Cranborne, the eldest brother of Robert Cecil (who is best remembered as Lord Salisbury, a three times Prime Minister). Cecil spent several holidays at the house and, many years later, recounted the lasting impression which Lyte had made upon his young mind. Other pupils included Lord Ogilvie and a son of Macready, the Victorian actor, among others. Lyte remained in charge of the new parish of Lower Brixham for over 28 years. In later years, however, he suffered ill-health and died at Nice in 1847.
Lyte is best-remembered for Abide with me which he wrote, according to his great-grandson, on September 4th 1847, whilst looking out over Brixham harbour on the eve of his last departure from England. The words were first published in 1850 by his daughter in his memory. He also wrote other great congregational hymns Praise my Soul, the King of Heaven and Pleasant are Thy courts above. In a letter dated 25 August 1847 to a Julia Barlow, he referred to the words of Abide with me as "my latest effusion" and copied them out at the end of the letter. (The September date is now discounted and the hymn is thought to have been written in July or August 1847.7
Lyte wrote many poems but he possibly had to "prostitute his art" for his patron, the Lady Earnham. The following poem was cut into a small memorial stone which stood in Brixham for many years:
Here lies Var (Lapdog of the Rt. Hon. Lady Earnham)
Breathe, gentle spring, break on this grassy mound,
And sing ye birds and bloom ye flowers around
Ye suns and dews, make green the resting place
Of honest Var, the noblest of his race
Gentle, yet fearless, active, fond and true,
He reads, proud man, a lesson here to you
And bide you (happy might you hear) to be
Guiltless in life and calm in death as he...
Dorothy Morrow, the American author and magazine editor, lived at the Hearthstone in Milton Street from about 1932 until the outbreak of World War 2.
Harry Partridge and George Sherriff went to Africa to undertake missionary work. The story of the links between the embryo Church in Africa and the worshippers at the Church of St. Peter the Fisherman were recorded by Philip Partridge early this century. The story began in the 1880s when Archdeacon Johnson, from the University Mission to Central Africa, returned to England to raise funds for a "mission steamship for Lake Nyasa" (now Lake Malawi). He brought three native boys with him and arranged for them to "learn about ships and the sea" by going out in the Brixham smacks. Although shy at first, and unable to understand English, they went with various skippers to the fishing grounds. Over the winter months, friendships grew between the "unbaptised Africans" and their hosts in the Church.
The Archdeacon later was successful in building his steamboat and it was shipped to Africa in parcels "about 56lbs in weight". It was carried 200 miles overland by natives and "fitted together by the lake side at Malinde" [Mulanje?]. It was named "Charles Janson", after the lone white man who had been with the Archdeacon on his first journey across the country. Following appeals for "one prepared to work and manage this steamer", Skipper George Sherriff volunteered to go. After a thanksgiving service at St. Peters, Sherriff sailed to the Lake, working the vessel successfully for three years before returning to Brixham. Going back for a second time, he died of fever and was buried on the "island of Likoma". Harry Partridge, another Brixham fisherman, subsequently became the skipper of the "Chauncey Maples" (a larger steamer which had replaced the "Charles Janson"). Alfred Brimecombe, another young Brixham man, went with him to help with the work ashore. Partridge also died later and was buried beside Sherriff. Brimecombe survived to return to the Westcountry and become a Bristol Channel pilot.
Flora Thompson. Born Flora Jane Timms at Juniper Hill near Brackly in December 1876. She inherited sensibility from her father but it was from her mother that she inherited her love of traditional songs and folklore, dry humour and a a strong old-fashioned sense of duty. Her mother, the daughter of an "eggler", went into service at the age of twelve. When Flora sat down to write Lark Rise "every one of the characters lived at Juniper, with only the names altered". Margaret Lane, in an introduction to her work, says: "What made Flora different from other children who shared her experiences, but found nothing in them significant or remarkable, was her deep focus of observation. The annals of the poor are rarely written; they have no archives. Country churchyards are full of the bones of men and women who lived her life and found nothing to say about it".
At 20 years of age she went to Grayshott to work, living with the postmaster's family (he was later to murder his wife and child with a carving knife) and, later, living on her own. At the age of 24 she met and married John Thompson when he was posted to Bournemouth. After her two children were born, she started writing again, now in secret because her husband disapproved. The Thompsons later moved to Liphook in Hampshire. It was whilst there that the Peverel Society was formed. In 1928, during a period of restlessness, her husband put in for promotion, and was immediately promoted to "Postmaster of Dartmouth". They lived at the "Outlook" in Above Town for twelve years. She made few friends and lived quite a secluded existence. Her first work appeared in the Lady but not until 1937 when "Old Queenie" was accepted for publication. She began Lark Rise that autumn and it was published in 1939.
John Thompson retired from the post office in 1940 and they moved to Brixham, to "Lauriston", off New Road. It was shortly after moving there that her youngest son, Peter, was lost whilst serving in the Merchant Navy, his ship being torpedoed in mid-Atlantic. She never recovered from her son's death and her modest success caused her to write at the time, "I am now too old to care much for the bubble reputation". Candleford Green was written at Brixham, "several of the passages written with the bombs falling" and when she was in the Morrison shelter. Still glides the Stream was completed only a few weeks before she died, suddenly and alone, in her room in May 1947. She disliked having her photograph taken, and 30 years ago there were apparently only two faded prints in the family. A fellow-member of the Peverel Society, who visited her in 1946, remarked that "her features [were] chiselled with a remarkable strength, more like the portraits of Marie Curie than anyone else I can think of".
She is buried in Longcross Cemetery in Dartmouth at the top of the hill past the entrance to BRNC [The grave is G1 near the war-graves]. In a letter to the Torquay Library, Lady Huntingdon said that the only surviving relative she had found was a grand-daughter living in Australia. Fame and fortune both came too late - after her death. John Thompson resented her literary skills but the "dwindling comfort of their marriage" never intruded into her work.
Richard Walter Wolston. In 1850, although a solicitor, he was described in 1850 as a "mine-owner, etc." because he then worked iron ore on Furzeham Common. By 1856 he was the "manufacturer of Wolston Torbay iron paint, sewerage pipes and iron-stone pottery". His major contribution to the prosperity of Brixham was his enterprise in bringing the railway to the town.
The Quay Lords of BrixhamLittle is written about the Quay Lords today. However, in the 19th century their influence was considerable. In 1822 Lysons' in his History wrote: "Brixham is divided into quarters; one belongs to the heirs of the late Duke of Bolton; another to Charles Hayne and John Seale and the family of Gillard; the fourth, formerly belonging to Pomeroy Gilbert of Sandridge, was purchased by 12 fishermen of Brixham Quay, but all the proprietors be their shares ever so small, called themselves 'Quay Lords'". The position was little changed about 1900. However, changes had taken place when the Quay Lords assumed control in 1859. A new pier, the Eastern Quay, was built to the seaward of the old pier.
The best explanation appears in a novel. In about 1900 Eden Phillpotts wrote in The Haven:
Mr Major was one of the Quay Lords of Brixham, the most famous and largest fishing village in Devon. A Division of the manor into quarters during ancient time and... that portion which descended by purchase to the Gilberts passed also by purchase into the hands of 12 fishermen. Their shares have divided and sub-divided without count since then; so it comes about that that village under Berry Head within the sheltering arm of Torbay numbers more lords and ladies of the Manor than any other town in England".
