HIGH STREET

Previously known as Park Lane this road connected the old part of the town to the beach and many people thought this was built in the 1800s but an older map shows there was an earlier road.

Where the car park is behind the South Devon Inn was a court containing a number of cottages demolished in the 1970s to make way for the car park. Next door is Cleveland Close, where stands the elegant 18th Century Cleveland House and its neighbour “The Cobbles”. In 1930s, they were combined to become a school and for a while Cleveland Garage fronted onto High Street.

Clifton Place was built around the 1900s on the site of Ivy House, in which a curate lived in the early 1800s, then a doctor.
Where Leigham Court is now, there used to be a large builder’s yard.

On the site of Belvedere Court had been a small hospital called “The Infirmary” founded in 1897. During that year, 39 people were admitted, 11 operations were performed and 2 patients died. They bought an X-ray machine for £46 12s and spent £80 on drugs. Later, it was the auctioneers Avant’s repository and sales room

On the north side of the road there was a forge until the 1880s, this was taken over by Avant undertakers who were still going in the 1980s.

At the top of Lawn Hill, which used to be New Cut, was Jenner’s green grocer’s shop.
Where the Jehovah’s witness’s Kingdom Hall stands was a slaughter house, where the cattle were driven in and sometimes causing chaos.

The biggest business in Dawlish was the brewery and lemonade works covering both sides of the road from 1817-1928. When the brewery ceased, the site became workshops for various builders and much later by Crocker, Martin & Williams who had a builders’ merchant shop until about 1994, which was left empty for years, apart from offices above, before being demolished and town houses built on its site.

Before Orchard Gardens was built in the 1920s the old cob cottages continued to be Ferris’s Brewery premises. In one of them in 1840s lived a smallholder called William Tuck, a son of Henry Tuck who kept donkeys on a plot by the putting green near the railway viaduct that was named after him. And also along here lived George Tozer a chimney sweep from about 1851 to 1871.

At the end of the road was Gay’s Dairy, now Costcutters, where people could buy a jugful fresh from the churn. And opposite is the entrance to Orchard Gardens commemorating the many orchards which grew here.