Andrew Iredale 

Andrew Iredale was a bookseller, stationer and fine art dealer with his own Library and Reading Rooms at 13, The Strand, Torquay. According to Troy J Bassett Iredale[1] was born in Huddersfield in 1840 but like many who moved to Torquay he did so because his health was bad and on the advice of his doctor in 1869. By 1872 he and his family were in Torquay and Iredale opened his first shop. Only two years later he had moved premises, to Cary Place in Fleet Street[2] and issued a catalogue of Second Hand Books (1877), and in 1888 he moved to 13 the Strand where he remained. His shop was photographed for an advert which was used in copies of the Torquay Pictorial in 1890 and 1893[3]. 

 

Iredale´s eldest son, George Herbert (b.1863) joined the company and gradually took over the business. Both of them took an active interest in the rapidly expanding town and took on various civic roles[4] which may explain his interest in publishing the map below once Torquay was near to becoming a fully-fledged Borough (but before St Marychurch and Cockington were amalgamated).

Besides the catalogue mentioned above two further works are known published from the Fleet Street address: Verba moerentis : five sermons preached in S. John's, Torquay by the late C.E.R. Robinson; with an appendix containing his last two sermons, preached on New Year's Day, 1881 and on January 2nd 1881, the Sunday before his death (1881); and Russia: Europe and the East / by a foreigner (who long held office in Egypt). This was possibly printed by J. Ogden and Co. 172, St. John Street, E.C and published by Iredale as well as by Griffith, Farran, Okeden, & Welsh, (successors to Newbery and Harris, West Corner of St. Paul's Churchyard) of London in 1885.[5] Iredale was also the publisher of a small number of local works. The earliest so far found is an anthology of poems for Henry Baird (writing under the pseudonym of Nathan Hogg), Kenyon Ghost, published 1888. This was already in its 5th edition so could also have been published from Fleet Street. The main online catalogue (JISC) only lists a total of 18 separate works plus one copy of the map below in a later version (post 1910).

He seems to have been active until the early 1910s and, according to a local directory[6], he was trading as Iredale and Son from 1911/12. Iredale was also an agent for Ward & Lock and stocked their Pictorial Guide series (red cover editions with London, Ward, Lock & Co. on the spine). However, his own name is found on the title page of some Ward & Lock guides to Torquay from 1897 (see Ward & Lock 8) to 1911 (7th Edition).

The map below was probably based partly on Westley’s large map produced 10 years earlier and the Ordnance Survey maps available at the time; much of the street information is very similar to Westley. However, the coastline is improved and  detail added, and this map has more of Cockington and St Marychurch, the two adjoining parishes in the title. The title states Borough of Torquay, a status awarded in 1892. St Marychurch together with Babbacombe were incorporated into Torquay under the Torquay Borough Expansion Act in 1900 which also saw Cockington amalgamated, hence the tentative date for the map (November 1900). The map shows the new pier built in 1895 as well as St Matthews church opened in 1896. Neither of the new hospitals, St Marychurch’s infectious diseases hospital at Lawes Bridge or Cockington’s isolation hospital built in Staddon’s Lane, appears on the second edition of the map.

Size: 573 x 792 mm.   Scale (1/2 = 125 mm) Mile.

IREDALE’S MAP OF THE BOROUGH OF TORQUAY WITH THE ADJOINING PARISHES OF St. MARYCHURCH & COCKINGTON. (Ea) with publisher’s imprint immediately below: PUBLISHED BY ANDREW IREDALE, Bookseller, Stationer, Fine Art Dealer; THE LIBRARY AND READING ROOMS. 13, THE STRAND, TORQUAY. No signature of engraver or printer but note: Copyright. Entd Stn Hall (EeOS).

Map shows all of borough and surrounding areas and stretches from Torbay Hall (by Livermead Sands, Ae) to Hopes Nose (just in border, Ee) and as far north as Lawes Bridge (Aa) and Oddicombe Beach (Ca). There is a grid in border: 1 to 18 south to north and A to Y from west to east. Compass point (Ed). 

1. 1896    Iredale’s Map of the Borough of Torquay with the adjoining parishes

                Torquay. Andrew Iredale. (1894).      Assumed.           

 

2. 1896    Map reduced and grid in border reads: from 1 to 18 south to north, and A to Y from west to east. Size: 573 x 792 mm. Note added below publisher´s imprint: SECOND EDITION – REVISED & CORRECTED.

 

                Iredale’s Map of the Borough of Torquay with the adjoining parishes ... Second Edition 

               Torquay. Andrew Iredale. (1896).          TQ[7].    


       

 3. 1901   Map size as state 1. Title shortened to: IREDALE’S MAP OF THE BOROUGH OF TORQUAY and THIRD EDITION. Reverse has street index and census return figures for 1901.              Boundary lines remain but wording removed. Roads added, e.g. Cary Avenue, St Anne´s Road; names of St Marychurch and Cockington removed and Boundary Wards added. 

              Iredale’s Map of the Borough of Torquay ... Third Edition

               Torquay. Andrew Iredale. (1901).            MW.       


Click here for later editions of this map (post-1900).    


[1] See Troy J Bassett´s (2019) excellently researched and highly interesting article Bassett, Troy J. “‘More than a Bookseller’: Iredale’s Library as the Center of Provincial Literary Life.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. [September 2022].

[2]  See https://ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/pc/issues/tec_15091882/page/34/ where Iredale is seeking (second hand?) copies of various books. From The Publisher´s Circular, 15th September 1882. The NLS has the Catalogue of Books mentioned (October 1877).

[3]  Torquay Public Library has copies of both.

[4]  Bassett, ibid.

[5]  One of the works listed in the JISC catalogue. It is together with a 64-page catalogue of works by Griffith and Farran.

[6]  Torbay Household and Business Directory, published by William McKenzie at the Torquay Times office.

[7]  A facsimile of the second edition was published to commemorate 100 years of Torquay’s status as a borough and issued by the publishers of the Herald Express newspaper. The illustration is from the facsimile edition. I would like to thank Mark Pool at Torquay Reference Library for confirming details on this map and suggesting a date between 1894 and 1899. Mark also provided details and copies of the later maps.

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