Qualla: Cockington

Cockington: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1929, A. R. Powys of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings had to issue a public statement: no, an American was not going to buy the Cockington forge, dismantle it, and re-erect it across the Atlantic. The rumour spread because Cockington is exactly the kind of place that triggers that kind of fantasy. Two miles inland from the bustle of Torquay, the village clusters around a thatched smithy, a thatched pub, and a series of cob cottages so unselfconsciously English that they appear in tour guides as proof of concept. The American never came. The forge stayed. The fantasy of taking a piece of Cockington home, though, has never quite gone away.

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cockington: Iron Age to Domesday

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Long before the cottages, there were hill forts. Two of them, dating from around 500 BC, stood on the ridges flanking Cockington Valley. Their builders left little behind, and the centuries that followed are mostly silent until the Saxons arrived, fishing the streams and farming ...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cockington: Lutyens Builds a Pub

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1936 the Drum Inn opened on the site of a former sawmill, and the village got its first significant new building in living memory. The architect was Sir Edwin Lutyens, the man who designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the viceregal palace in New Delhi. The Drum cost seven tho...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cockington: The Forge That Wasn't Quite Medieval

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SelfieCity, CC BY-SA 4.0. Visitors have been told for at least a century that the Cockington forge is medieval. The story is irresistible: a 14th-century smithy still in continuous use. The evidence, when you look at it, is thinner. An 1810 source dated the building to 1552. A 1971 history quoted that dat...

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Image: SelfieCity | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cockington: Almshouses, Cricket, and a Pony Mayor

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0. The almshouses, seven terraced cottages built in the reign of James I by the Cary family to house villagers who could not work, fell into disrepair under the Mallocks and were rebuilt between 1790 and 1810. The cricket ground was once a medieval deer park; play began there in 194...

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Image: PAUL FARMER | CC BY-SA 2.0