Ilsham ChapelTorquay

Ilsham Manor dates back to Saxon times and is recorded in the Domesday Book. All that remains of it today is a chapel, as unique as it is minute. It was built in the grounds of the Manor House, or Grange, and was used by the Canons from Torre Abbey as a place of solitary retreat.

Before the Norman Conquest the Manor belonged to a Saxon whose name was sometimes spelt Ber, sometimes Bere and sometimes Berus. He paid rent for it, but not much, since it only needed three ploughs to keep it under cultivation.

The Domesday Book records it in 1086 as having two beasts, two swine, forty sheep, ten goats and twenty acres of pasture, and as being worth in all the sum of ten shillings. It almost certainly had another asset which is not recorded, in the form of a tidal creek up the Ilsham Valley providing the tenants with direct access to the sea.

Some 200 years later the Manor, along with some other properties, was presented to the Canons of the Premonstratensian Order at Torre Abbey. The Charter which records this transaction states that the owner, who described himself as William the Younger, son of Lord W.M. Brewer, founder of Torre Abbey, made the gift for the good of his soul and for the soul of Johanna his wife, and for the souls of William and Beatrix his parents.

To be quite correct we should speak of the Manor as the Grange, for that was the term used in medieval times to denote a farm or manor house belonging to the Church, of which there were very many. It was probably not very long after it came into their possession, that the Canons of Torre Abbey set about building in the middle of the farmyard this very special chapel.

It consisted of three rooms, one above the other, each measuring little more than twelve feet by nine feet. Quite clearly it was built to serve both as a chapel, and a residence for a clerical person of some kind. But what would such a person be doing in the middle of the farmyard? Ellis, in his History of Torquay, put forward the rather improbable notion that he would be superintending the work of the farm.

Recent research however has uncovered a requirement laid upon the Premonstratensian Order by Pope Gregory IX. This was that they should set about the building of Oratories at their Granges. They were to be used by individual members of the Order as places of retirement from the distractions of the world. Only one other chapel comparable to Ilsham survives, that at Alfaresworthy near Bradworthy, which is architecturally of much less interest.

The room on the ground floor was probably used as the living room and office of the cleric in residence, who would normally be a Canon. Directly above this room was the chapel, which was reached by an outside flight of stone stairs protected by a wooden roof. Above the chapel was a third room which served as sleeping quarters. The floor of this room, which was also the roof of the chapel, has since disappeared.

The only pastoral duty of the Canon while he was in retreat, was to celebrate the Divine Office privately, and for the family living in the Grange when necessary. But since the upper room has several slit windows facing towards Lyme Regis and Torbay it would seem that he was also expected to keep a watch for hostile shipping and alert the Abbey if danger threatened.

With the Dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539 Ilsham Grange became the property of the Ridgeway family. It was occupied by many tenants until in 1768 it passed into the ownership of Sir Robert Palk when he bought for £12,000 the land on which now stands the greater part of Torquay. When his great grandson went bankrupt in 1885 Ilsham was bought by William Kitson who later sold it to the Rev. T.G. Whidbourne, after whom the nearby Whidbourne Avenue is named.

The farm continued as a working farm through all these changes, but its acreage dwindled steadily with the growth of the town.