Woodway House - Micro History

Micro History

Knowle Cottage was a cottage ornée in a similar style to Woodway House, built in Sidmouth by Lord Le Despencer in about 1820.

It is unclear whether the Spratt Sands off Teignmouth Harbour mouth are named after Jack Spratt or the Sand-eel or Sprat. The name is spelt both ways on maps and charts.

A large collection of old clay pipes stalks and bowls found in the rear vegetable gardens built up over the years. They were cheap and disposable, so this is not surprising. Many children must have lived at the house judging from the numerous clay toys, such as dogs, miniature tea sets, clay dolls, etc. that have been found. These finds were mostly in the vegetable garden and the field at the back of the property. They were transported there with the horse manure, the 'night soil' from the occupants of the house being added to the midden at the stable before being used as fertilizer. Small items of household rubbish were often added to the 'night soil'. Much of this collection is now held by Teignmouth Museum.

A young Gordon Griffith dropped a significant number of silver items of cutlery down the well in the late 1950s, so that he could hear the 'plop' sound as they hit the water. The well was covered with a large sandstone slab in those days, with a small hole at the front leading edge.

Commander Whalley's old sea chest is entailed with the house as a memorial to the Whalley family.

A ropewalk is shown on an 1842 map of Teignmouth, running parallel to the road from near Barn Park House, passed Trafalgar Cottage to end opposite East Cliff House.

A number of Trafalgar veterans settled down in East Teignmouth, with Trafalgar Cottage, James Spratt's first home, below Gorway, Robert Young at Minadab, only a short distance away, and Henry Bellairs of HMS Spartiate at Cliffden.

Window tax was first levied in England in 1696 to offset the expenses of making up the gold and silver deficiency in the re-coinage of William III reign caused by clipping and filing of coins. It was set at two shillings for small tenements, six shillings for buildings with up to ten windows and ten shillings for those with twenty windows. Cottages were exempt. To encourage the handing in of coins the authorities had decided to accept coins at their face value and not their weight. It was based on the number of windows in a house and large mansions often had many existing windows blocked up, such as a whole side of Loudoun Castle, in Ayrshire, Scotland. It was repealed in 1851 and replaced by a tax on inhabited houses.

Minadab at Holcombe is another Strawberry Hill style cottage, but of altogether a more eccentric construction. It was built in 1820 by Robert Benjamin Young, born in 1773. He was one of Admiral Lord Nelson's captains and he built his cottage to resemble a ship as much as possible, the east side being the fore end and the west side the after end. The upper floor was reached by means of a rope ladder. It has a round cellar with places for storing casks of rum. Young was a lieutenant in 1795 on the Bonne Citoyenne at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797 and he was in command of the frigate cutter Entreprenant in 1804 and fought on her at Trafalgar and later at the blockade of Brest. The Minidab was a French ship, but the significance of the ship is not known.

Cob is a carefully blended mixture of wet earth, containing enough lime to enable it to set hard. Also added are chopped reeds or straw, animal dung, sand, gravel and small stones as ballast. Cob walls are seldom less than two and as much as four feet thick. These were built up in layers of about six to twelve inches thick and each had to set before the next was added. A two story building could take anything up to two years to finish. The building up was done by eye, leading to the classic rounded and undulating appearance of cob walls.

Old Cotmaton Cottage in Sidmouth is another example of a 'Strawberry Hill' romantic gothic-style construction.