Directed by local filmmaker John Tomkins, the movie ‘Torbay's music legacy - 5 Decades of Sound’ features interviews with over 100 contributors and covers a half century of the Bay’s musical history.
Both are classified as heritage. Yet we often think of heritage as buildings such as Oldway, the Abbey, and the Pavilion. But, as John’s films show, we are all still making history as part of the ongoing stories of Torquay, Paignton, and Brixham. This is recognised by Torbay’s Local Heritage Grant Scheme which encourages our communities to develop projects about our literary, artistic, and musical heritage.
While history tells us what happened in the past, our heritage describes surviving evidence that exists in the present. It includes buildings and parks but also art, images, books, as well as language, customs, and beliefs.
Heritage is about our legacy, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. We can use it as a source of inspiration, a collective memory of who we are and where we come from.
History and heritage can also reveal where we are headed as we learn valuable lessons, avoid past mistakes, and make informed decisions that can positively impact both our present and future lives.
Yet, as Torquay is a seaside resort, heritage has often been packaged to sell services and experiences to visitors. Because of that, the tourism industry sometimes promoted a kind of theme park resort, an upper- or middle-class world familiar through heritage cinema and television. It also, often inadvertently, proclaimed the worth of specific groups which others were invited or expected to appreciate.
Today, however, we are more aware of the way heritage has been produced and consumed and who gets to tell their story. Torbay is changing and we can’t let what was deemed important from the past stand as self-evident by just being there. Communities are always evolving, shaped by specific circumstances and through new histories, interests, patterns, debates, and politics. Heritage cannot, therefore, be just about relating or defending a fixed local or national tale. A frozen history can become defensive, reactionary, and sentimental; and may even engender xenophobia directed at newcomers, foreigners, or outsiders.
Above all we need to see heritage as being inclusive of everyone. So, while Victorian and Edwardian Torquay was certainly a place of five hundred grand villas, visiting royalty, ballrooms, and yachting enthusiasts, it was also the setting of bread riots, soup kitchens, and home to workers, servants, prostitutes, and vagrants.
We are now exploring what heritage means to truly reflect both who we were and who we are now. And today Torbay is a multicultural society of many communities. Twenty-eight percent of Torquay town centre residents were born outside of the UK, for example.
Torbay is consequently a modern town comprised of those of many faiths and of none. In the 2011 Census we were asked if we had a religion, 62% of Torbay’s population said they were Christian. By 2021 that had fallen to 49%. The main change was from the growth of those with no religion, though other faiths have increased.
Much of history has been written by and for men, even though the majority of Torquay’s population have always been women. The wealthiest town in the nation needed a large servile class, a majority of those in service being women and girls. In 1881 the resort had a population of 19,000 females but only 14,000 males. After war, pandemic, and economic decline, in 1921 the male population had fallen to 16,000; while the female population had increased to 23,000. In 1939 the disparity had widened: 20,000 males to 32,000 females.
But it was only in 1928 that women gained the right to vote. It took a long campaign to achieve suffrage and maybe that change would have happened anyway. But to understand how we make things better, we need to remember the struggles of those such as Torquay’s Suffragette Organiser Elsie Howey. Between 1909 and 1914 Elsie was “in the vanguard’ of militancy”. She went to prison six times and should not be forgotten.
The lives of ordinary people were never the focus of Victorian and Edwardian biographies, so we need to look elsewhere for insights into their experiences. One valuable resource are the records held by the justice system. In one report of many we read how in 1875 Elizabeth Croker died after being beaten by her partner in a lodging house in Pimlico. However, despite other assaults, the jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from Natural Causes’ and her assailant walked free. Hopefully, we have learned from Elizabeth’s tragic death.
And so, there are numerous Torquay stories to be told and could include: histories of the Bay’s servants and hotel staff; entertainers; the LGBT community; of people with disabilities; the Jewish community; post-war Italians; and refugees from Eastern Europe after the Prague Spring.
Taking a broader and deeper look at our history and heritage can be uncomfortable, however.
By the end of the nineteenth century Torquay was the epicentre of the British Empire at leisure. The town was the product of an often-brutal expansion that went on for centuries and which dominated and exploited millions of people.
British colonialism began with the English invasion of Ireland which brought oppression, land confiscations, and the suppression of Irish culture and religion. In 1599 Sir George Cary went to Ireland tasked with “putting down rebellion and organising government”. Torre Abbey’s Cary family remained landlords in Ireland until losing their property in the Irish Land Act of 1882.
Another instance of the need to reconsider what we know and celebrate concerns the career of Francis Drake. Drake circumnavigated the globe and in 1588 was a vice admiral in the fleet that defeated the Armada. He captured the galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario and incarcerated the Spanish prisoners in Torre Abbey’s barn. Drake as a great English hero was what we were once taught in school. We were not told that in 1567 Drake made one of the first English slaving voyages as part of a fleet led by his cousin John Hawkins, so bringing African slaves to the 'New World'.
The Bay’s link to slavery and Empire continued when the Royal Africa Company was formed in 1672 by King Charles II in alliance with London’s merchants. The company transported around 100,000 African people into slavery carried by ships which gathered in Torbay before their long journey to West Africa. The money made by those enslaved people's work allowed Britain's industry to grow and many of Britain’s great houses to be constructed.
On the other hand, in 1833 Britain emancipated its enslaved people and paid the equivalent of £17billion in compensation money. But that money was not paid to the enslaved people; it was given to Britain's slave owners for 'loss of human property.' Six Torquay residents were compensated. History is messy.
For some even acknowledging that slavery or colonialism ever happened, and that Britain was a part of it, is offensive. Another view is that unearthing such history will just cause unnecessary division and should be left alone. And so, it has sometimes been seen as easier to ignore rather than confront issues around migration, racism, and the legacy of Empire.
Heritage has, nonetheless, the capacity to change attitudes, identities, and lives. Through our evolving traditions and recurring rituals, we connect with each other and to our past, preventing us from slipping into indifference and isolation. Heritage then has the potential to shape the present, being about the past, but for the future.
