Torquay’s Other History: The Corbyn Head Stench

By Kevin Dixon, on Sunday, October 2, 2011

Corbyn Head: the Corbyn Head Stench was called “one of the most important difficulties which Torbay Corporation has had to face”

For many years, Torquay was plagued by what was called “a shop window problem” which was “one of the most important difficulties which Torbay Corporation has had to face”. This was the Corbyn Head Stench which, embarrassingly, emanated from the beach in front of the Grand Hotel. Due to Torquay Station’s location, tourists were often able to smell the beach before they could see it.

In August 1938 Mr A Hill, a well known local architect, presented a petition of 150 names and told the Torquay Directory:

The odour given off by fresh seaweed in a breeze is not at all unpleasant, but this is the accumulation of years. Every time the tide goes out there is left behind a residue of mud some inches thick, consisting of decomposed seaweed and other matter which gives off sulphated hydrogen. When the sun plays on it, it is nauseating. Nobody will eat their food at Corbyn nowadays and hardly anybody will fight their way through the black, obnoxious thick mud to bathe. They all go over to Torre Abbey Sands.

It was agreed that one cause of the smell was the seaweed which decomposed in the natural channel between the rocks off Corbyn Head. The council could remove the seaweed by having workmen work all night at low tide. However, this was laborious and slow as lorries couldn’t be brought on to the beach. The proposed solution was to bring a barge into the channel, ground it, fill it with seaweed and then refloat it on the next tide.

Mr Hill wanted this plan to be put into action immediately:

All we want is to have the beach cleared of the foul, black mud and seaweed. Give me a dozen unemployed men with scoops and brushes and a barge and in three low tides I will clear the lot at a total cost of £50.

However, the problem had been studied by council officials for some years and finally the Ministry of Agriculture had been approached for advice.

It was then suggested that seaweed wasn’t the only, or even the main, cause of the Stench. It was found that there were

Vast beds of decomposed peat which lie under the Sea Front, the Grand Hotel, Abbey Gardens and the Recreation Ground. When the tide rises, the water percolates into these beds and when the tide recedes the water that has been in contact with the peat drains back into the sea. It is, of course, contaminated and gives off the offensive odour.

These peat beds are the remnant of the days when trees came right down to the waters’ edge. The vegetation rotted and formed the peat which became covered over as time went by.

Whatever the primary cause of the Corbyn Head Stench, all were agreed on one thing: