Following a 15-month cataloguing project the expansive Cary Estate archive collection can now be searched and viewed. Project archivist Stuart Tyler tell us about accessing this invaluable collection.
This project was funded by a grant from The National Archives’ Archives Revealed programme with additional support from the Friends of Devon’s Archives.
The Carys were a Catholic land-owning family particularly associated with Torquay, residing at Torre Abbey from 1662 until 1930. Their archive is cared for at the Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter.
Over 350 boxes spanning more than seven centuries of history, and comprising nearly eight thousand items described in our catalogue database, are now available to visitors.
An Invaluable Collection
Anyone interested in the history of Torquay, or with Torquay ancestors, will find the collection invaluable, with over one-and-a-half thousand deeds relating to the area, around a thousand architectural plans of local buildings and a run of solicitors’ letter books covering the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries.
The Carys were also lords of the manor in other parts of the county, including Northlew, Ashwater and Stokenham. There are extensive runs of manorial court rolls and accounts for these areas stretching back into the medieval period.
Family Dramas
As well as these property and estate records, the archive also tells the stories of the family’s personal dramas. These include a divorce in the 1500s that reshaped English law and an elopement in the 1700s which highlights the religious divides of the time. The local feud between the Cary family and the Dendys in the 1800s is also illustrated in letters and legal papers, including an account of how the Carys hired a gang of labourers to blockade Mr Dendy’s house with masonry in the middle of the night!
Explore the Collection
The Devon History Society and Friends of Devon’s Archives have also recently been awarded a Torbay Local Heritage Grant, and hope to make use of the Cary collection and other Torbay-related archives in support of this forthcoming project.