Post by Dave on May 17, 2020 14:27:25 GMT
Oldway Mansion Sunday 17th May 2020
I was talking on messenger with my daughter yesterday who moved to Wales with her mother when she was year 11 years old that was way back in 1997. I was gob smacked when she recalled so much detail of some of the places I took her to at weekends when I had access to her. One place she said was close to the famous Paignton Milk Bottle landmark and she remembered going through a gate in a wall.
I quickly realised she was talking about the entrance into the lake and garden area of Oldway Mansions, a place I last visited back on the 15th August 2015.
davesworld.proboards.com/thread/511/oldway-mansions-today-15th-august
Back then the plan was it was still going to be turned into a hotel with many houses being built in the grounds, something I was never happy about, but if it saved Oldway it might have been better than it falling further into disrepair.
The hotel plans fell by the wayside and then a group called the Friends Of Oldway was formed and in July 2017 they published a number of very ambitious plans for Oldway. Sadly very little seems to have happened since then and it was clear today Oldway sadly is suffering and in need of some urgent attention.
I left home at 8am as I wanted to go at a time I thought would not be very busy and that proved to be the case with just a few dog walkers in the grounds of Oldway. I went through the gate in the wall as I wanted to take a photo of the entrance for my daughter.
The once beautiful ponds were empty and vandals have very recently defaced the historic grotto in the grounds. They had been climbing over a fence into a man-made cavern in the rock garden to paint on the walls and start fires. The hidden garden was built in the grounds of the historic building early last century by a leading French landscape architect for Paris Singer. The grotto has now been fenced off and it was sad to see as once water flowed out from it, but not anymore.
I know a group of volunteers have been tending to the gardens at Oldway and thanks have to go to them all, but they are not as bright and beautiful as they were back in 2015. The mansion itself looks wonderful from a distance, but it is heartbreaking the closer you get to it. But then nothing has been done to the outside for a very long time and only essential repairs such as leaks in the roof have been carried out.
I was able to look through one window into a room that was used to do group wedding photographs and it was really upsetting. Ornate plasterworks low down to the floor ruined and just rubble on the floor now where they crumbled away from the wall possibly due to damp. A piano sat in the middle of the room, covered in a very thick layer of dirt and dust.
I dread to think what other rooms in the mansion look like and the longer nothing is done to Oldway, the harder it will be to bring it back into public use again. We really must not lose Oldway Mansion; there is no other building in the whole of Torbay that even comes close to it.
This dammed virus has not helped and has played a part in no further progress being made to get Oldway open again, but there needs to be a greater effort made to stop it deteriorating any further. The whole of the Bay needs to come together and save the jewel in the crown of Torbay.
It has been shown over the last few month just how much can be raised when people care enough, surly there is enough people not only in Torbay, but further a field who care about Oldway? People who want to see this wonderful building restored to its former glory.
We have already lost so many iconic buildings in Torbay due to a short sighted planning office, Oldway must never be allowed to become one of them, I have always failed to see why some things take so long to happen, meanwhile further damage just occurs and repair costs just rise and rise.
While I was saddened at what I saw today, it was still wonderful to see Oldway again, a place I and so many have got married at. I think it must be about 58 years ago when I first set eyes on her; my primary school in Newton Abbot took a group of us there to dance on the lawns in a country dance competition.
I really hope before my life ends, I see Oldway restored and open again.
