'Yew, Tor Abbey 1852'

This watercolour depicts a figure sat under a tall row of trees atop a small, green mound, overlooking a small herd of livestock, possibly sheep, on the grass below. A row of smaller trees separates them from two horned cows seen resting on the right, while a flock of birds pass overhead. ‘Yew Tor Abbey’ (now known as Torre Abbey) is inscribed on the bottom right. Torre Abbey is a medieval Monastery and archaeological site close to the Torquay seafront. Built in 1196, it was owned and updated by the aristocratic Cary Family from 1662 until 1930, after King Henry VIII closed the monastery in 1539. The grounds extended to the seafront and were populated with cows, sheep and horses. This watercolour is on a smaller piece of paper and pasted into the sketchbook, under which is another inscription reading ‘Tor Abbey 1852’.

This drawing is part of an album containing thirty-six drawings (PAG3476–PAG3511) by Harry Edmund Edgell (1809–1876), dated between 1851 and 1852. During this time, Edgell was living in Torquay, Devon, with his wife Caroline, with whom he had a daughter in June 1852. Edgell entered the Royal Naval College in 1821 and was involved in forcing the passage of the Bocca Tigris in China while serving as Lieutenant on HMS ‘Imogene’ in the 1830s. He became Captain in 1846 and commanded HMS ‘Siren’, in which he assisted in the removal of the sculptured remains of the Tomb of Mausolus (Canning Marbles) from Bodrum Castle, Asia Minor (now Türkiye), to the British Museum. After returning from the Mediterranean in 1847, Edgell did not serve on board a ship again until 1855. This sketchbook primarily contains landscapes and coastal scenes depicting everyday life in and around Devon. Some of the later pages depict places in China and other locations in Asia, suggesting Edgell may have used this album outside of the dates recorded. The final page contains a note in Edgell’s hand, titled ‘India’, recording the details of six ships involved in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, which began in April 1852.