History
Brixham is famous for being the landing spot of William III of Orange with
his Dutch army on November 5, 1688 during the Glorious Revolution, and many
local people still have Dutch surnames, being direct descendants of soldiers
in that army. A road leading from the harbour up a steep hill to where the
Dutch made their camp is still called Overgang, meaning 'transition' in Dutch.
The coffin house reflects Brixham humour: it is coffin-shaped and when a father
was asked for the hand in marriage of his daughter, he said he would 'see
her in a coffin, before she wed'. The son in- law to be bought the coffin-shaped
property, called it the Coffin House and went back to the father and said
'your wishes will be met, you will see your daughter in a coffin, the Coffin
House'. Amazed by this, the father gave his blessing."
The street names tell you about the history. Pump street is where the village
pump stood. Monksbridge was a bridge built by the monks of Totnes Priory.
Lichfield Drive reminds us that this was the route that the dead (from the
Anglo-Saxon ‘lich’ meaning a corpse) were taken for burial at
St Mary’s churchyard. Salutation Mews, near that church, dates from
when England was Catholic, and the salutation was to the Virgin Mary. Similarly,
Laywell Road recalls Our Lady’s well. The first building that you see
when you come into Brixham from Paignton is the old white-boarded Toll House
where all travellers had to pay a fee to come into the town and to keep the
roads repaired.
As you look into Brixham from the harbour, you see the tower of All Saints'
Church standing guard over the town. It was founded in 1815, and its most
famous vicar was the Rev. Francis Lyte, composer of "Abide with Me".
He lived at Berry Head House, now a hotel, and when he was a very sick man,
near to dying, he looked out from his garden as dusk fell over Torbay, and
the words of that beautiful hymn came into his mind as the evening of the
day and of his life approached.
The main church in the town is St. Mary's, about a mile from the sea, it is
the third to have been on the site, which was an ancient Celtic burial ground.
The original wooden Saxon church was replaced by a stone Norman one that
was in its turn built over in about 1360. Many of the old Brixham worthies
are buried in the churchyard, but, remember, it is very unlucky indeed to
walk widershins, or anti-clockwise, around the church.
The Sea
Brixham is also famous for being the town where the fishing trawler was invented.These
elegant wooden boats were invented in Brixham in the 19th century, and copied
all over the world, influencing fishing fleets everywhere. Their distinctive
sails even inspired the song 'Red Sails in the Sunset' which was written
aboard a Brixham sailing trawler called the 'Torbay Lass'.
In the Middle Ages, Brixham was the largest fishing port in the South-West,
and at one time it was the greatest in England. Known as the "Mother
of Deep-Sea Fisheries", its boats sailed all round the coats and helped
to establish the fishing industries of Hull, Grimsby and Lowestoft. In the
1890s there were about 300 trawling vessels here, each owned by one man who
was often the skipper of his own boat. There is still a big fishing fleet,
and you can seen them coming in and out of the harbour, followed by flocks
of seagulls. The fish market is open to the public on two special days in
the summer, when the finer points of catching and cooking fish will be explained
to you. The modern boats are diesel-driven, but several of the old sailing
trawlers have been preserved and are being brought back to life.
Hundreds of ships have been wrecked on the rocks here. Brixham men always have
known the dangers but even they were taken by surprise by the terrible storm
that blew up on the night of January 10th, 1866. The fishing boats only had
sails then and could not get back into harbour because gale force winds and
the high waves were against them. To make things worse, the beacon on the
breakwater was swept away, and in the black darkness they did not know where
they were. According to local legend, their wives brought everything they
could carry, including furniture and bedding, to make a big bonfire on the
quayside to guide their men home. If their husbands and sons perished, there
was no future for the rest of the family so what did it matter if they burnt
all their poor possessions. Fifty vessels perished and more than one hundred
lives were lost in the storm; when dawn broke the wreckage stretched for
nearly three miles up the coast.
Hearing of this tragedy, the citizens of Exeter gave money to set up what became
the RNLI's Torbay lifeboat, which has rescued hundreds of people.
Since 1866 located at Brixham, Torbay lifeboat station has operated an all
weather lifeboat and today the station also has an inshore D class lifeboat.
The crews have a remarkable history of bravery with 52 awards for gallantry.
You can visit the boathouse and look at all the memorials to the brave deeds;
on special occasions you can go on board, see how survivors are cared for,
and wonder at all the high-tech equipment. You may perhaps, one day or one
night, hear two maroons fired. That is the signal for the lifeboat to be launched
and within a few minutes you will see the crew, rushing from their jobs or
their beds, ready to save the lives of strangers with no thought of any danger
to themselves, as they have done for the last 130 years.
There have always been smugglers at Brixham. It was more profitable than fishing,
but if the men were caught, they were hanged. There are many legends about
the local gangs and how they evaded the Revenue men. One humourous poem describes
how a notorious local character, Bob Elliott, could not run away because
he had gout and was hidden in a coffin, but later that same night the coastguards
were frightened by meeting what they thought was his ghost. Another old villain
was caught in possession but evaded capture by pretending to be the Devil,
rising out of the morning mists. On another occasion when there was a cholera
epidemic, some Brixham smugglers drove their cargo up from the beach in a
hearse, accompanied by a bevy of supposed mourners following the cortege
drawn by horses with funerial muffled hooves.
The town's harbour is protected by a long breakwater, which is well used for
sea angling. In winter this is a regular site for Purple Sandpipers, and
a North American Laughing Gull, thought to have been brought across the Atlantic
by Hurricane Wilma, was present here in autumn 2005.
To the south of Brixham, and sheltering the southern side of its harbour, lies
the coastal headland of Berry Head. Which has a Lighthouse, Iron Age Fort & National
Nature Reserve.
[edit]
Quarrying & Mining
Apart from fishing, most of the other local industries were connected with
our rocks. Limestone was once quarried extensively. It was used to build
the breakwater, for houses and roads, and was sent to Dagenham to make steel
for Ford cars. It was also burnt in limekilns to reduce it to a powder which
was spread on the land in other parts of Devon as an agricultural fertiliser.
You will see the old quarries and the limekilns as you walk around the town.
Another mineral found in Brixham is ochre. This gave the old fishing boats
their "Red Sails in the Sunset", but the purpose was to protect
the canvas from seawater, not to be picturesque. It was boiled in great caldrons,
together with tar, tallow and oak bark, the last ingredient giving the name
of barking yards to the places where the hot mixture was painted on to the
sails, which were then hung up to dry.
The ochre was also used to make a very special paint. This was invented in
Brixham in about 1845 and was the first substance in the world that would
stop cast iron from rusting. None of the well-known scientists of the day
could find a way of doing this, and, when the paint began to be made here,
it sold all round the globe. Other types of paint were made here as well,
and the works were in existence until 1961.
There were iron mines at Brixham, and for a while they produced very high quality
ore but the last one closed in 1925. Most of the sites have been built over
and there are now no remains of this once important industry.
War Times
Warships have been seen in Torbay from the days of the Vikings up until 1944
when part of the D-Day fleet sailed from here. In 1588 Brixham watched Sir
Francis Drake attacking the Spanish Armada after he had finished his game
of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, and we saw, anchored in Torbay, the enormous galleon, “Nostra
Senora del Rosario” that he had captured. Today in Brixham harbour
there is a full-sized replica of the ship, the “Golden Hind”,
in which Drake circumnavigated the globe, and you can go aboard to see how
his sailors lived.
For centuries, ships going down the English Channel have come into Torbay to
seek refuge from the storms and to get food supplies. Sometimes these were
merchants, taking cargoes to far away places and bringing back exotic goods
and rare spices; sometimes they were carrying pilgrims, or gentlemen on the
Grand Tour.
Ever since the days of Henry VIII Brixham has played a part in the defence
of the Nation. The beautiful headland known as Berry Head is now a National
Nature Reserve, but it is also a famous military site where guns were once
positioned to defend the naval ships that were re-victualling at Brixham.
Twelve guns were put there during the War of American Independence, but were
removed when peace came in 1783. Just ten years later, when we were at war
with France, guns were again deployed around the town. The major position
was at Berry Head, but this time fortifications were built to defend the
gun positions. These can still be seen, and are now some of the best preserved
Napoleonic forts in the country.
During the long series of wars against the French that began in 1689 and lasted
until 1815, the Navy often came into Brixham to get supplies of fresh vegetables,
beef and water. There might have been twenty or so of the big men-o'-war lying
at anchor in Torbay, recovering from exploits of the sort described in the
books about Hornblower, Bolitho or Jack Aubrey. As you walk along the harbourside
towards the marina you pass a grey stone building on your right which today
is the Coastguard headquarters; then, it was the King's Quay where His Majesty's
vessels were provisioned. Local farmers brought vegetables to ward off survey,
and a great number of cattle were slaughtered and their meat packed into barrels.
The water came from a big reservoir situated near the crossroads in the middle
of town; from there a pipeline carried it under the streets and under the harbour
to the King's Quay.
Many of the well-known Admirals of the day were here. Not only Nelson, but
also Lord St. Vincent, Cornwallis, Hood, Rodney and Hawke. There was also
Earl Howe, who earned the nickname of Lord Torbay because he spent so much
time ashore in Brixham. Our most notorious visitor at that time was Napoleon
Bonapart himself, who, as a prisoner on HMS “Bellerophon”, spent
several days off Brixham waiting to be taken to exile on St. Helena.
Battery Gardens have a known military history leading back to the Napoleonic
wars and the time of the Spanish Armada. The emplacements and features seen
here today are those of the Second World War and are of national importance.
The site is recognised as one of the best preserved of its kind in the whole
of UK and in 1997 English Heritage ‘listed’ one of the main features,
the Battery Observation Post; today the whole site has been scheduled by this
organisation. Of the 116 ‘Emergency Coastal Defence Batteries’ set
up in the UK in 1940, only seven remain intact.
Thank you to the kind people at Wikipedia for
their well researched information.
|
