Qualla: Cockington Court https://qualla.com/cockington-court en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Cockington Court https://qualla.com/cockington-court Cockington Court: Introduction https://qualla.com/cockington-court/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before she invented Hercule Poirot, before she became the bestselling novelist in history, Agatha Christie was Sister Anne in a homemade burlesque of Bluebeard. The year was around 1912. The setting was the terrace of Cockington Court, a 16th-century manor outside Torquay where her friends the Mallocks lived. In the photographs that survive, Agatha is in voluminous harem trousers. Her hostess plays Scheherazade. The men sport magnificent whiskers and turbans. The first act of the play, the programme promises, is titled "Why Did They Bag-Dad?" It is impossible, looking at those laughing young people on the lawn, to imagine the war that was about to take all of it away.

Read more: Cockington Court on Qualla

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/gbvr-cockington-court-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cockington Court: Saxon Bones, Tudor Walls https://qualla.com/cockington-court/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The manor at Cockington is old enough to appear in the Domesday Book of 1086, but the bones beneath it are older still. The Cary family raised the present house in the 16th century, a Tudor pile of stone and slate set in a fold of the Devon hills two miles from the sea. Sir Georg...

Read more: Cockington Court on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/gbvr-cockington-court-saxon-bones-tudor-walls.mp3 0:06 2 full Cockington Court: The Bluebeard of Unhappiness https://qualla.com/cockington-court/ Photo credit Matthew Hartley, CC BY-SA 2.0. Margaret Mallock loved theatricals. She and her husband Charles Herbert Mallock were friends of Agatha Christie's mother and would invite Agatha across the valley for weekends of cricket, picnics, and amateur dramatics. In her autobiography Agatha remembered "a musical play got u...

Read more: Cockington Court on Qualla

Image: Matthew Hartley | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/gbvr-cockington-court-the-bluebeard-of-unhappiness.mp3 0:06 3 full Cockington Court: The Telegram https://qualla.com/cockington-court/ Photo credit Adrian Pingstone at en.wikipedia, Public domain. What came next was the war that ended everything. Charles Mallock joined up. In 1917 he was killed in action. His wife Margaret was pregnant with twins and was out on the road when the telegram reached her. Margaret's sister Joan Millyard remembered the shock: "the baby girl live...

Read more: Cockington Court on Qualla

Image: Adrian Pingstone at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/gbvr-cockington-court-the-telegram.mp3 0:06 4 full Cockington Court: A Craft Centre, A Living Room https://qualla.com/cockington-court/ Photo credit Garth Newton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Mallocks announced the sale of the Cockington Estate in 1932. The Torbay Council bought the lot, and what had been a private demesne became a public possession. Today the Tudor house operates as a craft centre and event venue, the kind of working heritage site where you can b...

Read more: Cockington Court on Qualla

Image: Garth Newton | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/r/cockington-court-wp/gbvr-cockington-court-a-craft-centre-a-living-room.mp3 0:06 5 full