Overlooking the village of Braunton, in North Devon, a ‘prominent church-like’ tower was once a landmark on the heights of East Hill. It was however ‘less ecclesiastical’ than it looked, being a belvedere that was inaugurated in 1857 in commemoration of Sir Robert Peel and his efforts to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. Only a crumbling ruin remains today, which is a great shame as it has the most fascinating of histories.

The monument was the work of Thomas Mortimer (1798-1866) who lived at nearby Franklin Cottage. According to the 1851 census, Mortimer worked in the Civil Department of the Ordnance, and contemporary documents note him as a ‘linguist, politician and above all philanthropist’. As a ‘staunch liberal’ he had ‘deep sympathies with the working classes’, and is remembered as one who would ‘rather wipe the dew-drops from the brow of an honest labourer than salute the cheek of a duchess’. He was ‘an ardent admirer’ of Sir Robert Peel (below), to whom the tower was dedicated.

Mortimer was also a poet, and he composed some lines about Braunton, in which he described his reasons for settling in the village:

For here, contented with my humble lot,
I early built myself a lowly cot;
Where varied prospects, land and sea,
All tend to my felicity.

His ‘lowly cot’, which he named Franklin Cottage, stood in a large garden and a zig-zag path led up to Mortimer’s ‘pretty tower’ which had a rooftop terrace, complete with battlements and pinnacles, giving magnificent views.

The tower was described as ‘in course of erection’ when Billing’s Directory and Gazetteer of the County of Devon was published in 1857. When completed, the book announced, the tower would have a greenhouse in the lower storey, a study in the upper room, and an observatory at the top. The author was also informed that a bust of Sir Robert Peel was to be placed in a niche between the second and third floors.

Guests from the worlds of literature and politics met in August 1857 to inaugurate the tower, the building of which had been delayed by illness and death: Mortimer’s wife Elizabeth died in 1848 and his teenage son in 1854, and Mortimer himself had spent two years confined to his cottage with an illness from which he feared he would never recover. A flag was flown from the rooftop bearing three Ps for Plenty, Peace and Peel.

Happily, the long inscription was recorded before the tower fell into disrepair:

This tower was built by THOMAS MORTIMER, a Working Man, in honour of SIR ROBERT PEEL, the first British Minister who regarded the claims of Labour, and who when plainly perceiving the justice of FREE TRADE PRINCIPLES, promptly sacrificed his private predilections, and resigned his leadership of a powerful Party, in order to promote the permanent prosperity of the PEOPLE.

He filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he sent empty away.

While Grandeur’s sons seek Glory’s shrine,
At War’s grim Moloch kneel:
Let Labour lovingly incline
To Plenty, Peace and Peel.

One room in the tower was home to a display of local fossils, and built on at the base was a space described as of a ‘more NECESSARY than ornamental kind’ – in other words it housed a privy. This space was ‘dedicated’ to Benjamin Disraeli, who had clashed with Peel over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, and the inscription demonstrated Mortimer’s aversion to the man:

DISRAELI’S REFUGE
Sneering, jeering, satirical BEN –
Most specious of sophists and spiteful of men.

Inside the ‘refuge’ were what the reporter delicately called ‘some lines appropriate to the place’. This was presumably nineteenth century toilet humour, and the newspaper declined to elaborate further.

Within only a few years of Mortimer’s death the tower’s history had become muddled, with a gazetteer published in 1879 claiming that the tower had been erected in 1833 to commemorate the passing of the Reform Bill. The tower seems to have been left to moulder and by 1936 it was overgrown with ivy and ‘battered by storms’. In that year the local parish council decided to buy the land at East Hill as a public open space, and to accept the gift of the tower from the then owner, Captain Stephen Chugg. The councillors thought the hillside would be the ‘perfect space to celebrate’ the forthcoming coronation (of Edward VIII, although of course it would be George VI who was eventually crowned).

The Flâneuse arrived in Braunton keen to visit the tower and this public space but was, alas, thwarted. For reasons unknown, the council’s purchase of the land does not seem to have gone ahead and, after driving round in circles, she couldn’t find any access to the tower.

Post-war, the condition of the tower had been raised, and an article in the local paper asked if there were any ‘Braunton people sufficiently interested in its preservation to take some action in the matter’. It doesn’t appear that there was any interest, and the tower continued to deteriorate.

By the time the Ordnance Survey map was updated in the 1960s it was described as ‘Peel Tower (Ruin)’. The tower was listed at grade II in 1985, but sadly there is little left of Mortimer’s platform for his views – political and panoramic.

Sir Robert Peel died in 1850 and he was buried at St Peter’s at Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire. With monuments and statues being erected across the country, his family chose to install a simple plaque in the church:

In memory of
The Rt Hon Sir Robert Peel, Bart.
to whom the People
have raised Monuments
in many places.
His Children
erect this in the place
where his body
has been buried.

Among the many monuments raised by the people was another ‘Peel Tower’. This was erected on Holcombe Moor, near Ramsbottom in Lancashire, and opened in 1852. Unlike the Braunton tower, the Flâneuse did not struggle to find this mighty landmark.

Thanks to Rosemary Madgett of Braunton Museum for her help with this post.

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