George Templer (1781 – 12 December 1843) was a landowner in Devon, England, and the builder of the Haytor Granite Tramway. His father was the second James Templer (1748–1813) who had built the Stover Canal.
He inherited the Stover estate in Teigngrace, Devon on the death of his father, but left its running to his lawyer, preferring to spend his time hunting (founding the South Devon Hunt), writing poetry, and in amateur dramatics. He lived with a mistress and had six children by her before running into financial difficulties and selling his entire estate to the Duke of Somerset. He later built himself a house on the outskirts of Newton Abbot and married the daughter of Sir John Kennaway in 1835. He died in 1843 after a hunting accident.
George Templer was born in 1781, the eldest son of the second James Templer. He was educated at Westminster, and inherited the Stover estate on his father's death in 1813. Noted for his kindness, his hospitality and for his lavish lifestyle, his interests lay in poetry, amateur dramatics, field sports and cricket rather than business, which he mostly left to his lawyer and others. [1] Before 1815 he fell in love with Ann Wreford, the daughter of a nearby farmer, who moved in with him and bore him six children, although they were not married. [2] [3]
From the early 1800s, Templer was involved in the breeding and training of beagles, [3] and he was master of the first regular hunt in South Devon, the South Devon Hunt which he founded in about 1810. [1] [4] He was an early friend of Jack Russell, "The Sporting Parson", and taught him much about fox-hounds. [5] In 1820 he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the South Devon Yeomanry. He was also a pioneer of cricket and was one of the founders of Teignbridge Cricket Club in 1823. [3] Templer was fond of entertaining at Stover House: his guests included Sarah Siddons and "Mr. Kemble", who were said to have praised his and his family and servants' performance of Shakespeare. [2]
In the later 1820s Templer ran into financial difficulties, considered today to be due mainly to his extravagant lifestyle [6] and his lack of business acumen, though he himself blamed his downfall on the dishonesty of a lawyer, about whom he wrote a bitter poem entitled "The Attorney", [7] the first verse of which runs: [8]
Friends! neighbours! countrymen! / I take the liberty to warn ye, / Against that universal scourge, / A rascally Attorney.
He was forced to sell his pack of hounds in 1826, meaning that the South Devon Hunt did not meet in 1826/7. [3] This led him to write a poem to his old hunting horn which he recited at a meeting of sportsmen in Chulmleigh under the chairmanship of the Hon. Newton Fellowes. [9] [10] In January 1829 he sold his entire estate including the Stover Canal and the Haytor Granite Tramway to the 11th Duke of Somerset. [11] On leaving the estate for the last time he wrote the following: [7]
Stover, farewell! Still fancy's hand shall trace
Thy pleasures past in all their former grace;
And I will wear and cherish, though we part,
The dear remembrance ever at my heart.
Not as the hare whom hounds and horn pursue
In timid constancy I cling to you;
But, like the bolder chase, resolved, I fly,
That where I may not live I will not die.
He went abroad, but returned to the area before 1833 and built Sandford Orleigh house on the outskirts of Newton Abbot. [12] [13] In 1835 he married Charlotte Kennaway, [14] daughter of Sir John Kennaway, 1st Baronet of Escot House. At Sandford Orleigh he had a set of early-16th-century carved oak screens made into an ornamental overmantel: this was donated to Newton Abbot museum in 2008, after being removed from the house when it was converted into flats. The overmantel had suffered some damage, but it was restored and is now on display in the museum. [15]
Templer died at Sandford Orleigh on 12 December 1843 after a hunting accident. [16] There is a mural monument to him in Teigngrace church.
Templer built the Haytor Granite Tramway that ran for 8.5 miles (13.7 km) from his granite quarries at Haytor to the head of the Stover Canal that had been constructed by his father. It may have been the winning of a contract to provide granite for John Rennie's rebuilding of London Bridge that led Templer to develop the tramway; [17] light grey "Devonshire Haytor" granite was specified, along with two Scottish granites, by the Act of Parliament that authorised the new bridge. [18] The tramway was opened on 16 September 1820 with a great celebration at Haytor at which Templer gave a "short and energetic speech, which excited bursts of applause". [19]
In 1825 Templer formed the Company of the Proprietors of the Devon Haytor Quarries, which soon became a joint-stock company, with capital of £200,000 and offices in Broad Street, London. [6] He built accommodation for the quarry workers near to his quarries, including in 1825–6 a row of houses and a hostel (now the Rock Inn) at Haytor Vale. [20] The Duke of Somerset, who owned the land, was paid £200 a year by the company for the right to extend its quarrying to 600 acres, though it actually only ever used 90 acres. [6] The company was soon providing several thousand tons of granite a year for buildings such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, [13] and many others. [6] The granite was also used for more prosaic and local uses such as kerbstones, pavements and setts for road surfaces. [3]
After the granite was transferred from the tramway carriages to barges, the barges travelled down the Stover Canal and then down the Teign estuary to the port of Teignmouth. This traffic was in addition to the transport of ball clay that was still ongoing since the opening of the canal by Templer's father in 1792. To help with the transfer of the granite from the barges to ships for the next leg of the journey, Templer built a "New Quay" at Teignmouth in the early 1820s. [1]
Templer's business ventures were only able to support him for a short time: by the late 1820s he was in financial difficulties despite shipping 20,000 tons of clay and granite per annum down the canal. [11] The difficulties with the granite business have been attributed to the strong competition that developed from other sources of granite, particularly in Cornwall, that did not need two transfers (tramway to canal barge, and barge to ship), [21] as well as Templer's lack of business acumen, which was described by L. T. C. Rolt in 1974 as him being "incapable of answering letters or taking important decisions and equally unable to select reliable men for positions of trust in his ventures". [22]
After the sale of his assets to the Duke of Somerset, Templer became the chief Devon agent for the Haytor Granite company in the early 1830s, but he still caused problems for the company. For example, in 1833–4 questions were raised over whether he had properly retained the lease on the quarries, and the directors questioned his reticence in chasing up money owed and his willingness to sell the granite at far below its fair price. [23]
The River Teign is a river in the county of Devon, England. It is 31 mi (50 km) long and rises on Dartmoor, becomes an estuary just below Newton Abbot and reaches the English Channel at Teignmouth.
Teignmouth is a seaside town, fishing port and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is on the north bank of the estuary mouth of the River Teign, about 12 miles south of Exeter. The town had a population of 14,749 at the 2011 census.
Newton Abbot is a market town and civil parish on the River Teign in the Teignbridge District of Devon, England. Its 2011 population of 24,029 was estimated to reach 26,655 in 2019. It grew rapidly in the Victorian era as the home of the South Devon Railway locomotive works. This later became a major steam engine shed, retained to service British Railways diesel locomotives until 1981. It now houses the Brunel industrial estate. The town has a race course nearby, the most westerly in England, and a country park, Decoy. It is twinned with Besigheim in Germany and Ay in France.
Ilsington is a village and civil parish situated on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, Devon, England. It is one of the largest parishes in the county, and includes the villages of Ilsington, Haytor Vale, Liverton and South Knighton. The parish is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Bovey Tracey, Teigngrace, Newton Abbot, Ogwell, Bickington, Ashburton, Widecombe-in-the-Moor and Manaton. In 2001 the population of the parish was 2,444, greatly increased from the 886 residents recorded in 1901. The parish is represented in parliament by Mel Stride, as part of the Central Devon constituency.
Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset, styled Lord Seymour until 1793, of Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire and Stover House, Teigngrace, Devon, was a British peer, landowner, astrologer and mathematician.
A plateway is an early kind of railway, tramway or wagonway, where the rails are made from cast iron. They were mainly used for about 50 years up to 1830, though some continued later.
Haytor, also known as Haytor Rocks, Hay Tor, or occasionally Hey Tor, is a granite tor on the eastern edge of Dartmoor in the English county of Devon.
The Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway was a 7 ft 1⁄4 in broad gauge railway which linked the South Devon Railway at Newton Abbot railway station with Bovey, Lustleigh and Moretonhampstead, Devon, England.
The Stover Canal is a canal located in Devon, England. It was opened in 1792 and served the ball clay industry until it closed in the early 1940s. Today it is derelict, but the Stover Canal Society is aiming to restore it and reopen it to navigation.
The Haytor Granite Tramway was a tramway built to convey granite from Haytor Down, Dartmoor, Devon to the Stover Canal. It was very unusual in that the track was formed of granite sections, shaped to guide the wheels of horse-drawn wagons.
Lustleigh station was on the Moretonhampstead and South Devon Railway serving the village of Lustleigh, Devon, England.
The Hackney Canal was a short canal in Devon, England, that linked the Hackney Clay Cellars to the River Teign. It was privately built by Lord Clifford in 1843, and throughout its life carried ball clay for use in the production of pottery. It closed in 1928, when its function was replaced by road vehicles.
Chudleigh Knighton Halt was on the Teign Valley Line serving the small village of Chudleigh Knighton, Devon, England. The halt, built by the Great Western Railway at a later date than most of the other stations on the line, was located on the west side of Pipehouse Lane off the B3344, to the south of the village.
The Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway (P&DR) was a 4 ft 6 in gauge railway built to improve the economy of moorland areas around Princetown in Devon, England. Independent carriers operated horse-drawn wagons and paid the company a toll. It opened in 1823, and a number of short branches were built in the next few years.
Sir John William de la Pole, 6th Baronet of Shute in the parish of Colyton, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of West Looe. In 1791 he published, under the title Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon, the researches on the history and genealogy of Devonshire made by his ancestor the antiquary Sir William Pole (d.1635), which he did not publish in his lifetime and which were enlarged by his son Sir John Pole, 1st Baronet, but which were partly destroyed during the Civil War at Colcombe Castle.
James Templer (1748–1813) of Stover House, Teigngrace, Devon, was a Devon landowner and the builder of the Stover Canal.
Teigngrace is a civil parish centred on a hamlet that lies about two miles north of the town of Newton Abbot in Devon, England. According to the 2001 census, its population was 235, compared to 190 a century earlier. The western boundary of the parish mostly runs along the A382 road; its short northern boundary along the A38; and its eastern partly along the rivers Bovey and Teign. It comes to a point at its southern extremity, near Newton Abbot Racecourse. The parish is surrounded, clockwise from the north, by the parishes of Bovey Tracey, Kingsteignton, Newton Abbot and a small part of Ilsington.
James Templer (1722–1782) of Stover House, Teigngrace, Devon, was a self-made magnate, a civil engineer who made his fortune building dockyards.
Stover is a historic estate in the parish of Teigngrace, about half way between the towns of Newton Abbot and Bovey Tracey in South Devon, England. It was bought by James Templer (1722–1782) in 1765 and passed through three generations of that family before being bought by Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset in 1829.
The South Devon Hunt or South Devon Foxhounds is a foxhound pack in Devon, England. The country spans an area entirely within the county of Devon, predominantly on the East side of Dartmoor, out to the sea. Traditionally, the country was the land between the River Exe and the River Dart from Exeter to Totnes.