Watcombe (Brunel) Park, (also known as Watcombe Park and Brunel Manor), Newton Abbot, England

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.  

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Watcombe was created on a site which remained farmland until it was acquired by Brunel in a series of purchases made between late 1847 and 1858. Brunel's son noted (1870) that his father had admired the view from Watcombe while travelling between Teignmouth and Torquay. The St Marychurch Tithe map (1840) indicates the disposition of the fields from which the landscape was developed; some field boundary banks and trees remain within the 19th century landscape and appear to have been used to form its outline. Parish roads from St Marychurch and Barton to Stokeinteignhead ran through the valley which was to be the focus of the estate. Closure was permitted by the Vestry in October 1848.

W A Nesfield (1793-1881) was consulted on the design of the gardens and ornamental landscape in 1847 (Evans, in Tooley 1994), and Brunel and his head gardener Alexander Forsyth made plantations for shelter, and to screen the gardens from the Teignmouth turnpike to the east, using some semi-mature trees. A system of wells, reservoirs, pumps and an ornamental lake to supply water both for the projected house and for the gardens was installed on parkland to the south of the site by William Simpson of Pimlico. The pump house and the outline of the lake were shown on the 1937 Ordnance Survey (OS) map, but the site is now (1998) developed. Plans were commissioned from William Burn in 1851 for a projected mansion on the site of the present house, but by the time of Brunel's death in 1859, only the foundations and cellars had been constructed, and a plan prepared in 1859 indicates the extent of the estate. To the west, a drive and finger of plantation extended about 500 metres from the site of the house to Great Hill which had been acquired in 1849, while to the east of the Teignmouth road, a further area of plantation with walks leading to the site of a projected summerhouse was connected to the main pleasure grounds by a timber bridge.

The walks and planting in the pleasure grounds south of the house were established by 1859, and other features including the rockeries 100 metres and 260 metres south, and the steps and shrubberies about 200 metres south-west of the house are also shown. Brunel's notebooks and correspondence indicate his close personal involvement in the development of the landscape, and in the formation of a collection of recently imported exotic trees and shrubs. The grounds were open to the public and were a noted feature of the locality.

In 1864 Watcombe was sold to John and Robert Vicary. Retaining the services of William Elson, Brunel's head gardener since 1851 (Grant 1922), the Vicary brothers continued to allow public access. No house was constructed until the estate was acquired in 1873 by James Crompton, a Lancashire mill-owner who used Watcombe as a winter residence. Work on the house remained unfinished at his death in 1876, when the estate, now comprising 500 acres (208 hectares), was sold to a Nottingham banker, Colonel Ichabod Wright. The 1888 OS map shows that the outline of the garden remained essentially unchanged since 1859, except for the creation of a new drive east of the house, and the abandonment of Brunel's drives which approached the site from the west and south. The estate was sold in 1907 to Sir John Edwards Moss, who changed its name to Roby Hall, and in 1923 Frederick Lund sold the lower pleasure grounds to Torquay Borough Council which has since maintained them as a public park.

In 1932, the Christian Holiday Fellowship purchased Watcombe, and in the 1950s, the house became known as Brunel Manor. It has been owned by The Woodlands House of Prayer Trust since 1962 and is run as a Christian Holiday and Conference Centre.

Land to the east of the Teignmouth road and north of Watcombe Heights Road, and adjacent to Merevale Close and Kingsgate Close, is in multiple private ownership. Considerable storm damage was sustained in 1990, with many of Brunel's mid 19th century trees being lost. Torquay Borough Council has implemented a management plan which included clearance of damaged trees, replanting using original species where possible, and the reinstatement of paths, steps and seats from the mid 19th century scheme.