page_title: Manor of Tor Mohun
section_title: Palk
hierarchical_section_title: Manor of Tor Mohun / Descent / Palk
caption_attribution_description: English: View entitled "Torwood" dated November (1793), watercolour by Rev John Swete (d.1821) of Torwood House in the parish of Tor Mohun, Devon. Devon Record Office DRO 564M/F4/18
context_page_description: Tor Mohun is a historic manor and parish on the south coast of Devon, now superseded by the Victorian sea-side resort of Torquay and known as Tormohun, an area within that town. In 1876 the Local Board of Health obtained the sanction of Government to alter the name of the district from Tormoham to Torquay.
  The ancient Church of St Saviour, the parish church of Tor Mohun, is on Tor Church Road, today serving as the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Andrew. It contains several monuments, most notably to Thomas Ridgeway of Torwood House, lord of the manor of Tor Mohun, and of the Cary families of nearby Torre Abbey, and Cockington Court, both within the parish.
context_section_description: In about 1768, the Earl of Donegal sold Tor Mohun with its manor house known as Torwood, and several other estates, to Sir Robert Palk, 1st Baronet (1717–1798), who had recently returned from his career as Governor of Madras in the East Indies with a "princely fortune" at his disposal and was "in quest of a seat in his native county where he might enjoy the fruits of his toil in elegant leisure and courteous hospitality". He was not however happy with the layout of the estate as fields next to Torwood House had been sold off by the Ridgeways and thus "interfered with the demesne", that is to say interfered with his privacy. He attempted to buy back the fields in question from his neighbour Mr Cary of Torre Abbey, who refused to sell. He therefore decided to alter his plan of turning Torwood House into a palatial residence, and purchased another estate at Haldon, where he built Haldon House as his new seat, one of the grandest houses in Devon. He let Torwood House and the Tor Mohun estate to a farmer ("converted it into a farm house" (Swete)). Torwood House was described by Rev. John Swete as follows, when he visited the area in 1793:
  "The house was not quite half mile distant from the quay: passing by an elm of great bulk I ascended some steps and through an arch'd gateway enter'd a spacious court of a quadrangular form surrounded by high walls. The house had a venerable aspect, its windows formed by stone mullions and over its projecting doorway was a sculpture, possibly the arms of the family of Ridgeway, its antient possessor. The rooms within have nothing remarkable but their size; the Hall in particular possesses from this circumstance no small degree of consequence and the chamber above, now converted into a general dormitory for the servants of the farmer who rents the estate, seems to be of equal dimensions. There are however no other remains of the magnificence of the family that inhabited it, no fretwork, no sculpture but the arms I have before noticed, no painted glass in the windows..."
  Swete painted three watercolours of the house and its setting in 1792/3, which survive in the Devon Record Office. The only element he found which reminded him of the "savour of antient workmanship" was the staircase, the steps of which were made not of planks but of solid blocks of oak. Eventually Palk, together with his neighbour Cary of Torre Abbey, devised a plan to develop the two adjoining estates of Tor Mohun and Torre Abbey into a seaside resort town for visitors, now Torquay. On a previous visit in 1792 to the then small village of "Torquay", Swete remarked in his Travel Journal: "About six in the evening I quitted Torquay which under the auspices of Sir Robert Palk (if the plans which I have seen be carried into execution) will be one day raised into importance".
caption: Torwood House, former mansion house of the Ridgeway family, painted by John Swete in 1793
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