Qualla: Moreton House, Bideford

Moreton House, Bideford: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RobThinks, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tobacco built this house. The Bucks of Bideford were ship owners and merchants who ran their fleet across the Atlantic to Virginia and Maine starting in the 17th century, when Bideford was the leading tobacco port in England. From those profits they bought land - more and more of it - until by the end of the 18th century their estates almost ringed the north side of the town. In about 1760, one of them, George Buck, rebuilt what was then called Daddon House as his own residence. It was rebuilt again in 1821, renamed Moreton House, and stands today off the road between Bideford and Abbotsham - a Georgian survivor with five acres of what was once a great park.

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Image: RobThinks | CC BY-SA 4.0

Moreton House, Bideford: Bucks and Their Antlers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 23:44, 27 October 2014 (UTC)), Public domain. The family's name is also their heraldry: per fess embattled argent and sable, three buck's attires each fixed to the scalp counterchanged - three sets of stag antlers, half white, half black, a literal canting on the surname. The arms still hang in Bideford Town Hall in portrait...

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Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 23:44, 27 October 2014 (UTC)) | Public domain

Moreton House, Bideford: A Change of Name

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Follower of George Romney, Public domain. Lewis William Buck, the younger brother who eventually inherited, was MP for Exeter and then North Devon, sat in the Commons from 1826 to 1857, and inherited Hartland Abbey under the will of his great-aunt Charlotte Hooper Morrison. By the time his son took over, the Buck family ...

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Image: Follower of George Romney | Public domain

Moreton House, Bideford: A Garden, a War, a Sale

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 02:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)), Public domain. The gardens at Moreton became locally famous - two lakes, fountains, waterfalls, formal herbaceous borders, all laid out by Sir Hugh Stucley, who took his greatest personal pleasure in landscape gardening. Sir Hugh served as Mayor of Bideford, making him the 37th member of his fa...

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Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 02:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)) | Public domain

Moreton House, Bideford: Grenville College and After

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Stucley family sold Moreton House in 1956. It was bought by Grenville College, a private school that occupied the site until 2009. Various subsidiary buildings - Scott House, Crabbe House - went up in the grounds for school use. When the school closed, its playing fields beca...

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Image: Roger Cornfoot | CC BY-SA 2.0

Moreton House, Bideford: What the Land Remembers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 02:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)), Public domain. From above, the house and stable block sit in a green pocket between modern Bideford and the Abbotsham road, with the Torridge estuary just to the east. The family's mark on the surrounding county is harder to see but easy to trace: Hartland Abbey to the west, Affeton to the sout...

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Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 02:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)) | Public domain