Paignton's Men of Vision

Where would we be without those men of vision?

Besides having a mention in the Domesday book 1086AD Paignton was in 1066 a Celtic settlement known as Paega’s town.

In 1870 it is chronicled as having been a fashionable watering place when the local inhabitants were nick-named Flat-polls after a well known variety of cabbages that were grown and exported from the area now called Palace Avenue and beyond.

Having taken pleasure in researching the history of Paignton those men of vision who contributed so much to the area are particularly impressive, and I do wonder how Paignton would now be without the calibre of such men

Those who particularly stand out are Isaac Merritt Singer, Oliver Heaviside, George Bridgman, Arthur Hyde Dendy and Herbert Whitely. Without their vision we would surely be all the poorer.

Of course the most well known, and sewing machines still bear his name, is Isaac Merritt Singer, 1811-1875 who built and lived in Oldway Mansion ,who died at the age of 63 after fathering at least nineteen children by his five

‘known wives’ but he and his family did much to promote the area and donated to many deserving

charities. This flamboyant womaniser had certainly lived life to the full but his genius was in the design of a more efficient and simple sewing machine which sold in the millions making him a very rich man. He is buried in Torquay Cemetery.

Whereas Singer was an extrovert, Oliver Heaviside was quite the opposite, a very quiet and reserved man who never married and probably never knew the love of a woman, who seemed quite content to give his life to his work and of course gained the recognition of being a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits discovered along with a colleague, Arthur Edwin Kennelly

the “Kennelly-Heaviside layer” in the ionosphere, important to radio communication. His genius and contribution locally and not only locally but to the world was priceless

He was buried in Paignton Cemetery, where he joined his mother, Rachel and father Thomas in 1925 at the age of 74.

But for his sheer ingenuity and vision for a new Paignton, which would expand away from the original hub of Winner and Fisher streets into the cabbage fields beyond, George Soudon Bridgman, given the support of three colleagues named Walter George Couldrey a fellow architect, William Lambshead and Onesimus Smart Bartlett,

had gained his reputation in being the chief architect responsible for the design and building of Oldway Mansion and his zest continued in developing much of the Paignton and Torquay we know today. He too designed Paignton Pier and the sea wall which enabled building on reclaimed land on the sea side of the new railway. Perhaps he is fittingly remembered as The Father of Paignton.

During those years it was fashionable for seaside resorts to have their piers. Keen to promote the place to be known as the Golden Sands, Barrister Arthur Hyde Dendy, who had purchased Teignmouth Pier financed a similar one at Paignton in 1879 which was opened in June of that year. He was attributed to have written in a holiday guide that Paignton Pier would not allow

“rollicking horseplay and boisterous fun” like Ramsgate and Margate - that Paignton prefers to be select, dignified and discreet. Dendy erected the Gerston Hotel in 1870 and also owned the Esplanade Hotel and several other properties as well. He also built the "Royal Bijou Theatre" attached to the former, which he developed in his role of patron of the arts.

He started the Bathing Machine Company in 1871, an omnibus company to Torquay in 1872, the Pier Company (1878) and constructed the cycling track (1883). His major contribution to the prosperity of Paignton was the building of the Pier. Dendy also ran a local newspaper, a service of steam launches from his Pier to Torquay and, in 1879, was host to the Doyley-Carte Co. for that first performance of Pirates of Penzance.

And so to Herbert Whitley

who’s personality perhaps was not dissimilar to Oliver Heaviside, he too lived a quiet and humble life but was never the less a genius in his own right, he did much to put Paignton on the map during those austere years in the mid 20th century and contributed much of his botanical garden stock to the Goodrington cliff walk and other Council owned public gardens, he also presented as a gift to the Council the land at Clennon Valley where now stands the sports centre and Ravenswood Gardens in 1933.

In 1917 he purchased Slapton Ley giving a haven to nature lovers everywhere

He

died in 1955, when Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust was set up to continue his work.