Revelstoke

Revelstoke is an elusive place. You can visit it, walk through it and find buildings bearing its name, yet look for Revelstoke on a modern Ordnance Survey map and you may struggle to find it. The explanation lies in its history. This was never primarily a compact village but an ancient manor and parish, embracing land around what is now Noss Mayo and Stoke Bay. The name can be traced to Richard Revel, lord of the manor of Stoke in 1198, from whose family came the name Revelstoke. The old civil parish finally disappeared in 1935 when it was incorporated into Newton and Noss. (Historic England)

Its most evocative survival is the church of St Peter the Poor Fisherman, standing in its secluded position above Stoke Bay. There was probably a church here before the Norman Conquest; the present building has medieval fabric dating from the thirteenth century onwards. It was badly damaged by a storm in 1840, after which worship increasingly moved to the more conveniently situated chapel at Noss Mayo. By about 1870 the old church had effectively been abandoned and much of its roof was eventually lost. Today its roofless nave and surviving medieval woodwork give it the extraordinary character of a ruin which is nevertheless still a consecrated church. (Churches Conservation Trust)

The great change in the district came with Edward Charles Baring, member of the celebrated Baring banking family, who bought the Membland estate in 1877 and in 1885 became the first Baron Revelstoke of Membland. He was no ornamental country gentleman: he became senior partner of Baring Brothers and was a director of the Bank of England. At Membland he spent lavishly, employing the architect George Devey to transform the house and estate and creating a remarkable collection of farms, cottages and service buildings. His expenditure also benefited the neighbourhood. He paid for the new St Peter's Church at Noss Mayo, completed in 1882 using local tradesmen, and commissioned the celebrated nine-mile Revelstoke carriage drive around the coast, whose construction provided winter employment for local fishermen. Much of that drive survives as part of today's South West Coast Path. (ryda.org.uk)

Among the memorials remaining in the old church is one which opens a window onto an earlier Revelstoke family. William Kingcome (1834–1870) was a merchant seaman and captain of the Hudson's Bay Company's barque Princess Royal in 1862–63. He appears to have been a nephew of Admiral Sir John Kingcome, who was born at Revelstoke in 1793 and later became Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy's Pacific Station. The Kingcomes were therefore a local family with a strong maritime tradition, which explains why William and his young wife Miriam are commemorated in this remote Devon church even though their story ranged across the oceans. (McMaster University Library)

A little inland, Rowden Farm and Rowden Court preserve another part of Lord Revelstoke's landscape. Rowden Farmhouse was built in 1884, bearing Edward Baring's monogram, while the impressive planned farm buildings beside it — barns, cowsheds, stables, implement sheds and an engine house — were constructed at the same time, probably by George Devey's office. These buildings, now known collectively as Rowden Court and converted to residential use, are Grade II listed reminders of the scale and sophistication of the Victorian estate. (Historic England)

The estate did not survive intact. The financial crisis that overwhelmed Barings in 1890 destroyed much of Lord Revelstoke's personal fortune, and the property was subsequently broken up. Sales in the early twentieth century transferred much of the former estate into separate ownership. Revelstoke Park House, itself originating as a seventeenth-century farmhouse, survived; during the later twentieth century a caravan park was established in its grounds. The present Revelstoke Holiday Park, descending through its wooded valley towards Stoke Beach, is therefore another chapter in the changing use of the old estate rather than the origin of the name Revelstoke. The precise date at which the caravan park was first established is not given in the surviving published sources I have found. (Historic England)

What survives today is consequently not a village called Revelstoke but a landscape bearing the remains of several different Revelstokes: the medieval parish and its ruined church, the Kingcomes' maritime world, Lord Revelstoke's ambitious Victorian estate, the farms and buildings created under his patronage, and finally the holiday park which has preserved the old name beside the sea.

The memorial tablet to Miriam and Captain William Kingcome in St Peter the Fisherman, Revelstoke. Miriam, the beloved wife of William Kingcome, died aged only 22 on 1 January 1862, after a short illness aboard the ship Charlotte Janette, Jeejeebhoy, at the entrance to the River Hooghly in India. The tablet was erected by her grieving husband. Captain William Kingcome died on 18 October 1870, aged 36. The photographs show the weathered original inscription and a restored, more legible version (with inaccuracies!).