Arts & Cultural Policy for Brixham Penninsula
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Arts & Cultural Policy for Brixham Peninsula What currently exists Art activities and groups: Some professional artists – mainly figurative and literal, selling in small gallery shops around town or in a shared pop up shop or on the Old Fish Quay Saturday Arts & Craft Market stalls during the summer months but this is not a year round site. Driftwood art– designer Karen Miller, has a base and shop in the town and Gail Trezise, a Brixham artist, has a studio at nearby Cockington Court. There is little contemporary art design in Brixham and surrounding areas. Devon-based artist Kate Green was commissioned to create „My Brixham‟, a light box art project, designed to promote the town's new Fish Quay in August 2010. Sited on the main south westerly wall of the new employment building, next to the South West Coast Path., it is a multi-layered artwork, demonstrating what Brixham means to the people who live and work there. Sadly, it is not always lit up nowadays. Gallery and exhibition display space is virtually non-existent, other than in small shops and galleries. There are several photographers living and working in Brixham and Churston, creating primarily land, town and seascapes aimed at selling to tourists. There are also a few pet photography specialists. Brixham Society of Art is primarily amateur artists, who hold an exhibition for a week in the summer, in the Scala Hall, Brixham Town Hall. There are several amateur choirs – Quay Harmony, the Riveria Singers, Brixham Orpheus Male Voice Choir. Local bands – Brixham Town Band, Brixham College Band Local amateur theatre groups – BOADS – Brixham Operatic and Dramatic Society and South Devon Players. Youth performance groups – Brixham Dance Project, Dramatically Different and Project Performers. Heritage assets: Heritage fleet of old trawlers and sail training ships. Shoalstone Open-air Pool (now being re-branded as Shoalstone Lido) – swimming pool amongst the rocks. Battery Gardens has a military history leading back to the Napoleonic wars and the time of the Spanish Armada, with a gun platform from 1586. The emplacements and features seen here today as Brixham Battery are those of the Second World War and are of national importance. The site, listed by English Heritage, is recognised as one of the best preserved of its kind in the UK. Of the 116 'Emergency Coastal Defence Batteries' set up in the UK in 1940, only seven remain intact. There is a small museum, operated by volunteers, running activities focussed on the Second World War. The D Day Landing Slip - a ramp and piers were built in the lee of the existing breakwater in 1943, giving a four-berth Landing Ship Tank (LST) slipway and embarkation hard from which American servicemen left for the D-day landings during the Second World War. It is now a listed site. Berry Head –. The headland known as Berry Head is now a national nature reserve, but it is also a military site where guns were once positioned to defend the naval ships that were re-victualling at Brixham. Twelve guns were put there during the War of American Independence, but were removed when peace came in 1783. Just ten years later, during a war with France, guns were again deployed around the town. The major position was at Berry Head, but this time fortifications were built to defend the gun positions. These can still be seen, and are now some of the best preserved Napoleonic forts in the country. Statues: William, Prince of Orange, on the harbour side at the Strand. A stone monument of a base, cross and anchor, c1866 in Drew St - to sailors who died in the great Torbay shipwreck of 11 January 1866. In development - „Man & Boy‟ statue to commemorate fishermen lost at sea – again very literal and figurative Listed historic churches: St Mary the Virgin Church, Churston Ferrers. It was built alongside the manor house, originally as a private chapel for the Ferrers family. It was handed to the parish in 1490. St Mary the Virgin, a 15 century church in Drew St, Higher Brixham, is the oldest one in Brixham. It is the third church to have been built on the site (which was an ancient Celtic burial ground). The original wooden Saxon church was replaced by a stone Norman church, which was, in its turn, built over in about 1360. Many of the important townspeople are buried in the churchyard All Saints Church, Church St in the Town Centre, where Reverend Lyte was Vicar, composer of „Abide With Me‟, founded in 1815. The Wesleyan Methodist Church in Fore Street was built in 1816, and Reverend Lyte‟s wife, a staunch Methodist, worshipped there. The United Reformed Church in Bolton Street, a Congregational Chapel. 1843-5, restored and altered 1872 and 1908, with schoolrooms added as a mid/late C19 extension. The Brixham Baptist Church, Middle St, was built in 1895. The built heritage in the town: The town itself – multi-coloured painted cottages tumbling down the hillsides in the town centre. There are a considerable number of Grade II listed buildings in Brixham, mostly fishermen‟s cottages around the town centre and farmhouses, manors and cottages near St Mary‟s Church in Higher Brixham. There are also many listed public houses in the centre of the town. Most famous to visiting tourists is Ye Olde Coffin House (formerly Listed as Temperance Place Coffin House). A house with shop that is a unique Grade II listed building and, as the name suggests, shaped like a coffin. Probably dating to the early 19th-century and remodelled in the early 20th century, it was supposedly built after a father told his daughter that he would see her in her coffin before she wed. The couple built a house in the shape of a coffin, and met her father's wishes. However, this appears to be nothing more than a nice legend. Friars Pardon, Black House and Black Friars House – all names for a listed building in Milton St, Higher Brixham - built in the fourteenth century for the use of monks during the building of the nearby St Mary‟s Church. Supposedly haunted by Squire Hilliard, 16th century gentleman whose son hung himself when his father forbid his marriage to a local girl. The Berry Head Hotel – originally completed in 1809 for use as a hospital if Napoleon invaded. In 1834, the Reverend Henry Francis Lyte made it his home, laying out its 41 acre grounds in a series of rock walks, much of which remains today. It was a combination of the peace of this beautiful house, its grounds and superb views across Torbay that inspired this famous poet and hymn-writer, in 1847, the year of his death, to write the famous hymn „Abide With Me‟. It is now a hotel. At the entrance to Brixham, at the junction of Monksbridge Road and New Road, there is a listed former toll house, dating from about 1838. The British Seaman‟s Boys' Home was founded in 1863 by William Gibbs of Tyntesfield for the orphan sons of deceased British seamen. It was closed in 198, after 125 years. Today it is used as a Youth Activity Centre. Wolborough House overlooks the marina. A large and imposing house from around 1910, in an eclectic style, as a mixture of Arts and Crafts and French Baroque, in rusticated local grey limestone with highly decorative moulded and painted cornices. Known to some locally as „the „Edward Scissorhands‟ house, the Gateway entrance is also heritage listed. Churston Court Inn is a historical 12th century coaching inn in Churston near Brixham. A Grade II* listed building, it is located next to the old church and farm and retains its original staircases, stone windows, and oak panelling and flagstone floors Lupton House, Churston –a Grade II* listed building set in beautiful parkland. The House has a long and interesting history with the first records dating back to the Doomsday survey of 1086. Since the Upton family settled on the estate in 1480, through to American forces using the house and grounds in the Second World War, Lupton House has formed an intrinsic part of Brixham‟s heritage. There are also „contemporary‟ buildings preserved and Grade II listed in Brixham as well, notably Melville Aubin-designed „Sunpark‟, a 1930s art deco property, and Parkham Wood House, Parkham Road, built in 1960 by architect Mervyn Seal, with a „butterfly‟ roof design. Modern architecture from the 1970‟s architect, Mervyn Seale, is a feature of the Berry Head area, as well in surrounding Torbay and Kingswear, where he built his own home, Kaywana Hall.. Contemporary architecture is created in Brixham today by Stan Bolt, an award winning architect, based in Brixham. Notable amongst his designs is Berry Head Rocks, recently featured on television as an example of leading marine architecture, the remodelling of Kaywana Hall in Kingswear and his own house, recently constructed overlooking Fore Street, Brixham. Industrial heritage: Much of the industrial heritage of Brixham is preserved in the Brixham Heritage Museum, New Road, Brixham, in small artefacts. During the Napoleonic Wars the need for increased quantities of flour saw the construction, around 1810, of the windmill on Warborough Common, at Galmpton, for grinding grain from local farms. It is now derelict. Apart from fishing, most of the other local industries were connected with stone. Limestone was once quarried and used to build the breakwater, for houses and roads, and was sent to Dagenham to make steel for Ford automobiles. It was also burnt in limekilns to reduce it to a powder which was spread on the land in other parts of Devon as an agricultural fertiliser.