Newton Abbot: in 1967 work started on building Chichester Estate with street names dedicated to famous Devon seafarers – but nobody calls it ‘Chichester’ anymore

Chichester Estate: does anyone from the town remember the estate where all the streets – as well as the estate itself – are named after Devon seafarers?

---

Having left slums in the town centre in 1965 I was very pleased to be in a council house at the top of Buckland Estate – hot running water, inside toilets, central heating – the sheer luxury was overwhelming. It was glorious; the five of us had never had it so good. In 1967 we were very lucky to move from Moorland View into a brand new home built at the top of Drake Road as one of four ‘show-homes’. Within months of moving in we were six.

The four show homes in two blocks of semi-detached houses were each different, with slightly different layouts, heating systems and so forth. Teignbridge Council were, I believe, keen to know which worked best, and perhaps which were most favoured by tenants. A lot more were due to be built over the next year or so.

After we moved in it was fascinating to see houses appear on green fields literally overnight. There was a need for fast construction at the time and the houses built here were of the ‘Instu Concrete’ type. Essentially a wooden frame – or ‘mould’ if you will – would be erected on foundations and concrete poured in. The frame would be removed and voila – instant house.

Obviously, it was not quite ‘instant’ as all the plumbing, electrics, windows, etc. had to be fitted, but it was very quick. And I have to say they were well-built by any standards, but particularly by the standards of non-traditional construction methods. Put it this way, if the house I lived in from new came up for sale today I would buy it. I don’t have the money to buy any kind of house – but if I did…

Our house had very good space standards and was very well laid out, with front and back porches, downstairs toilet, entrance area with coat and shoe storage, an enormous living room, three bedrooms and a bathroom. Although built in 1967 it is better than most houses I see being built now, in 2024.

The only downside was the warm-air central heating, which was a nightmare for health and comfort. It eventually caught fire – I remember it well as my father was a mile underground at the time (he was a miner for Watts, Blake & Bearne) but also a reserve fireman. By the time he made it ‘up top’ and the short distance to the fire station he missed the first appliance, heading for Buckland on the second. He was horrified when he saw the address – it was his house!

I should add that it was not a fire as such. I would have been about 11 or 12 at the time and first noticed an acrid smell and thin wisps of green smoke floating like an upside-down sea on the ceiling. We didn’t have a telephone in those days so I ran to the nearest box to call the fire brigade. It turned out to be an electrical fire in the copper coils of the heating system. Of course, Newton Abbot fire brigade knew exactly how to deal with it. Needless to say the warm-air system – heater and ducts – was removed by the council and replaced with a gas boiler and wet system.

If you look from the town centre up towards Buckland you will clearly see the homes built from 1967-69: they are all pink. That is because the exterior concrete was rendered and pebble-dashed with stones of varying shades of pink. It was a good, long-lasting and almost maintenance-free finish that still looked good decades later.

Because so many homes were being built it was decided to come up with a theme for the new estate, and someone chose Devon Seafarers. Hence Drake Road, Hawkins Road, Raleigh Road, Frobisher Road and so on. The whole estate was named after the most recent Devon seafarer, Sir Francis Chichester. And so the ‘pink estate’ had a name – Chichester Estate.

There was even a new Devon General bus service for the estate. There were three buses an hour from the town centre to Buckland Estate, each taking a different route; two of them were circular – clockwise and anticlockwise – serving the new estate. They were proper buses too – big red double-deckers. Those were the days…

---

#Newton_Abbot #maps #housing #council_housing #Devon #history