Where Torquay players lived (a tentative history)

Checking Ralph Calland’s Barton Road address in Kelly’s Directory of Torquay and Paignton (1965) got me thinking about where Torquay United players have lived over the years. Immediately I suppose we have to understand the distinction between older players (usually with families) who chose to buy houses upon signing for the club and younger players who may either have lived for a while in rented accommodation or – if they were local – continued to stay with their parents whilst playing for the club.

I suspect any particular edition of Kelly’s is based on slightly dated information (eg 1965 might relate to 1964). Nor is there an indication as to how the information was compiled. Either way, given it’s a 1965 directory, how better to start than with the team that faced Spurs? I can’t guarantee I’ve got this completely right – some names are more common than others and the directory inevitably shows duplication of names– whilst it also needs to be stressed that only the name of the main householder is given in Kelly's. Consequently it doesn’t pick up lodgers or people sharing.

Starting with the manager Eric Webber (Courtland Road) there was a pretty strong Shiphay/Chelston influence in the team:

Terry Adlington – Hawkins Avenue
Alan Smith – JA Smith, Highland Road
George Allen – Drake Avenue or Sherwell Valley Road
John Benson – Laura Grove, Paignton?
Colin Bettany – Highland Close
Trevor Wolstenholme – not listed; relatively young player, recently signed
Bill Atkinson - not listed; relatively young player, recently signed
Geoff Cox – someone of that name in Stanbury Road. I don’t remember that but he was living on Sherwell Valley Road in the early 1960s and Padacre Road (or thereabouts) by the mid 1960s
Robin Stubbs - Cavern Road
Tommy Northcott – Drake Avenue
Mick Somers - not listed; relatively young player, recently signed
Harry Topping (trainer) – Swale Close.

A few of these may be wrong and the directory doesn’t extend beyond Torquay and Paignton. However, a strong bias towards the Chelston area where most of the new houses had been built in recent years (and where the club itself owned several properties). Certainly, I guess, an area to appeal to aspiring couples in their ‘twenties. I wonder if that was always the case with professional footballers - or a product of the post-war housing boom and the new consumerism?

Look around Torquay and you see plenty of Victorian buildings and many others built after 1950. Maybe not quite so many between 1920 and 1950, although they’re dotted around in Shiphay, Daison and along the main roads. Where, in that case, did our pre-1950 players live? Were they sprinkled around town in established properties in a pattern that reflected the wages and social status of the day? Or were they also grabbing new places like their successors?

Digging deeper into Kelly’s, here’s a few from an earlier generation in 1965:

Sammy Collins – Forest Road (shop)
Dennis Lewis – Cary Park Road
Don Mills – Kenwyn Road
Graham Bond – Chatsworth Road
Harry Smith – Sherwell Valley Road
John V Smith – Drake Avenue
Ernie Pym – Sherwell Valley Road (maybe Princes Road E)
Eddie Marsh – Padacre Road
Dennis Penford – Sherwell Valley Road
Gordon Astall – Frobisher Green

Still a strong Chelston focus. But what of later? Did the Watcombe/Barton area – Padacre Road, etc – become the area of choice for the players of the late 1960s and 1970s? Thereafter: the growing parts of Paignton in the 1980s or the Willows in more recent times? Possibly, in recent times, a gravitation to "dormitory" settlements such as Kingsteignton (or even Ivybridge or Cullompton if they've played for another Devon club). Perhaps the Newton Abbot area has become more popular since the team has started to train there. Or are footballers now less-clustered in where they choose to live and evenly distributed amongst us in town and country?

Any ideas or theories would be most welcome but - please - don't go as far as giving too much information about exactly where current players live. That's not the idea of the thread.