ONE hundred years ago — at 2pm on Monday, June 26, 2011 to be exact — in a crowded Town Hall, Frank Ward, of the auctioneers Ward and Chowen, brought his gavel down to start an epic sale of much of the lands and properties in the town belonging to Herbrand, the Eleventh Duke of Bedford.

It is described by local historian Gerry Woodcock in volume eight of his books on Tavistock's Yesterdays as the town's 'Sale of the Century.'

The auction not only saw the ownership of a number of assets in the town being acquired by the Tavistock Urban District Council but also it resulted in many traders in the town and tenants of much housing in the area, who the Duke was landlord to, becoming owners of their property.

In the context of the times the sale bought about an almost revolutionary social change in the town and in many ways its effects have shaped the unique town that we know as Tavistock today.

Herbrand, the 11th Duke of Bedford, was, according to his grandson, 'selfish and forbidding' but possessed of 'a highly developed sense of ducal responsibility'. He was certainly very conscious of his responsibilities as a landowner.

When he came to the dukedom in 1893 he inherited vast estates in many parts of the country. These included substantial properties in Devon. Three and a half centuries before, his ancestor, the first Earl of Bedford, had been granted, by the king, lands formerly belonging to Tavistock Abbey. They had remained in the possession of the family ever since. Five earls and 11 dukes had discharged the duties, and enjoyed the benefits, of ownership of the property, and of the power and patronage that went with it.

By the beginning of the 20th century the fortunes of family and of town appeared so inter-twined that it was impossible to think of Tavistock without her Duke.

Opinions on the value of the contract between dynasty and community might vary. There might be disagreement as to which partner had gained the more from the long-standing arrangements— but that a marriage existed there could be no doubt and since marriage was a permanent condition, there was no point in discussing, or even contemplating, its end. In this situation the shock of the news of a speedy and impending divorce was so much the greater!

The first indication of what might be in the wind came in a letter from Woburn Abbey, the family seat in Bedfordshire, written on August 13, 1909. In it the duke expressed his gratitude to his Tavistock tenants for their offer to buy his son a present to mark his approaching coming-of-age.

He wrote: 'In former days a coming-of-age marked the perpetuation to another generation of the existing relations between the owner and the tenants of the land. But rapid changes warn us that neither owner nor tenant can hope to maintain these relations for so long a period. Had these changes not taken place, I should have hoped to join the tenants with me, as members of my family, in celebrating an event, which, to them as well as to us, would have been a case for rejoicing. In the altered circumstances, that course is impossible.' The 'rapid changes' and the 'altered circumstances' which so vexed the Duke arose from the terms of the 1909 budget, in which Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George raised the levels of income tax and death duties, introduced a super tax, and arranged for a complete valuation of the land prior to the introduction of duties on land values.

Herbrand's response to what he saw as a direct attack on the landed interest was to decide to sell off parts of his huge estates, including the lands in Devon. The official announcement came in May 1910. It coincided with the death of Edward VII, an event which brought to an end negotiations with the Duchy of Cornwall for the sale of Endsleigh, the Russells' Tamarside residence. For hundreds of the Duke's tenants in the local area, the fate of Endsleigh was the least of their concerns.

After the first stunned reaction to the announcement from Woburn, the tenants of the Tavistock estates began to organise themselves. Under the leadership of J W Spear, former MP and political ally of the duke, they held a mass meeting and decided on a petition. It expressed 'regret' at the duke's decision, and 'without presuming to say what your grace should do with his property,' begged him 'most respectfully" to avoid a course of action that would be disastrous for Tavistock generally'. Of the 719 signatories, 552 lived in the parishes of Tavistock and Tavistock Hamlets, and a further 66 were from Lamerton and Milton Abbot.

The reply was not long delayed. On June 25 the duke wrote to Spear expressing 'real pleasure' at the 'good feeling which 719 tenants on the Tavistock estates express towards me', and declaring 'real regret at the severance of old and kindly associations'.

'I have', he announced, 'decided to sell the property in deference to the social and legislative tendencies of the day'. The latter phrase rumbled round the town for some weeks. Tavistock was a radical town, and undoubtedly the great majority of its inhabitants were supporters of the government of the day. Had they not, by their votes, contributed to bringing the disaster on themselves? There was a good deal of acrimonious debate during that summer, in public bars, chapel porches, and the correspondence columns of local newspapers. Nothing, however, could be done to deflect the duke from his purpose. In August he visited the town to make the preliminary arrangements for the sale. Practically the whole of the town property, together with the bulk of his estates in the neighbourhood, were to go, together with the Plymstock and Oreston properties. The limited exceptions were to include Endsleigh, a handful of farms, and, in the town, the newly laid-out Down Road, the Bedford Hotel, the library, and the estate office.

Messrs Ward and Chowen were engaged to conduct the sale which, it was expected, would take place in the following June.

At the time of the Duke's visit, in August 1910, the Tavistock Urban District Council, the local authority established only 12 years before, had already decided that it would be playing an active part in the transactions that were to follow. On July 5 it had decided to approach the duke with a view to taking over the town's water supply. Within a week the duke's solicitor had asked the council whether there was any other property that it might wish to acquire, and the council had unanimously decided on a list that included the markets, slaughter-house, town hall, south side of Duke Street, council offices, wharf, meadows, and swimming bath.

In August the duke suggested the transfer of these properties at a price to be fixed by arbitration, and in September a draft agreement was discussed. By January the council felt sufficient confidence in its policy to seek, one month before council elections, the support of the ratepayers at a town meeting.

A crowded town hall followed the lead of a unanimous council. The general feeling was that it would be appropriate for public amenities to be in public control. As one councillor said, in relation to the water supply: 'A water company is one of the most oppressive institutions that can exist, for it compels a man to pay heavily for something he cannot do without.' Armed with a mandate from the meeting, and further strengthened by an election result in which the only councillor to express reservations about the policy lost his seat, the council pressed on vigorously. When the details of the sale were published in the spring, all the properties involved in the deal were excluded, apart from the Meadows, which appeared, by some oversight, and had to be withdrawn.

Even with the omission of certain public amenities and buildings, the sale was to be on a huge scale. As the town prepared for the kind of change that had only happened once before in its 1,000-year history, the air of excitement and apprehension generated the wildest rumours. One was that Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea baron, was to buy everything and then use the town as the base for a political career.

In the event the duke was to do everything possible to ensure that no outside magnate would take over the town, as his ancestor had done in 1539. The Bedford policy was to encourage, as far as possible, the existing tenants to buy their properties. In addition, older tenants were to be allowed to retain their holdings for the remainder of their lives, and similar consideration was given to tenants who were also employees of the estate. When the dust had settled it was clear that, as the Tavistock Gazette put it, 'the introduction of foreigners has been rare'.

With the obvious exception of the public houses, where the brewers moved in to secure a number of tied houses, the general outcome was along the lines that the Bedford establishment had planned. Tenants became owners.

As the Gazette breathlessly recorded on July 7: 'A fortnight ago the number of freeholders in the town could be counted on one's fingers; now they are almost too numerous to mention.'

Under the hammer

Frank Ward, of Ward and Chowen, brought a crowded Tavistock Town Hall to order. Having delivered himself of some hopes 'that it would be to the benefit of the purchasers that the duke has decided to divide up his property', he brought the gavel down smartly and announced lot number one — 'the Sale of the Century' was under way.

Mr Ward had had a busy month. He had already officiated at two sales held in Plymouth at which the duke's properties in Plymstock and Oreston had been sold for a total of some £35,000. A few days before that the estates near Launceston, nearly 5,000 acres, had gone for £89,000. Now came the third, and most extensive, of the five sales that were to see the transfer of the family's vast estates in West Devon and East Cornwall. This one covered the property in Tavistock. Over a period of 11 days most of the town came under new ownership. Residences, hotels, shops, business premises, and open spaces were to be offered in 628 lots, with an average of 57 lots coming under the hammer each day.

The sale started with a bang. Lot number one was the New Market Hotel in the town centre. Bidding began at £500. It stopped at £4,250. The keenness of the bidding set the tone for a day in which £25,000 was realised. The area covered was Duke Street, Brook Street, and part of Parkwood Road. Of the inns, the White Hart went for £2,850 and the Golden Lion for £1,150. Duke Street shops changed hands for between £900 and £1225. In Brook Street most of the shops were bought by the tenants — the assembly in the hall establishing a pattern that was to persist throughout the whole sale by applauding each time this occurred.

The second day saw the disposal of the rest of Parkwood Road, after Frank Ward had explained, to further applause, that the duke had expressed a wish that the tenants would retain possession of all their fixtures. Of the 24 Parkwood Cottages, 6 were not put up, six were withdrawn, six attracted no offer, and six were sold — two to the sitting tenants.

On the Wednesday it was the turn of Dolvin Road, Exeter Street, and Kilworthy Lane. As on the previous day, a significant number of houses were omitted because of the duke's undertaking not to disturb his older tenants. The first round of applause this time greeted the announcement that the Salvation Army premises would also be withdrawn.

On Thursday Trelawny Road was sold, but most of the day was spent on the business premises in Bedford Square, Market Street, and Pym Street. Among a number of well-known businessmen who transferred their tenancies into ownership were J Morris, F C Palmer, E J Baker, J B German, R N Stranger, and O Jolliffe, as well as the  Tavistock Gazette, the Freemasons, and the Co-Op.

Friday produced the largest gathering of any day of the sale, with the assembly swollen by curious market-day shoppers. The lots included 20 in King Street and 35 in Bannawell Street. The Exeter Inn changed hands for £2,150 and the Union Inn for £2,200. One part of Bank Square was sold for £200 and the rest for £110. Again there was warm appreciation of the auctioneer's efforts to help to ensure a fair deal for the tenants. Mr Ward went as far, in the case of a tenant called J H Barkell, who was blind, as to appeal for there to be no competitive bidding. He was successful, and Mr Barkell became the owner of 16 Market Street for £170.

Saturday brought the total of lots up to 369, with the sale of properties in West Street ranging in price from the Queen's Head Hotel, which was bought by the tenant for £3,025, to a series of houses, like numbers 68 and 69, which changed owners, but not occupiers, for £260 each.

The second week of the sale began on Monday, July 3, with some substantial town-centre properties coming under the hammer. Some of the amenities in the area, like the Meadows and the Wharf, did not feature, having been included in the package that the Urban District Council was negotiating with the duke. Nonetheless there was a great deal of interest in what would happen to such properties as St John's and the old grammar school building at the junction of Russell Street and Plymouth Road. They were both finally knocked down to the tenants, the former for £2,050 and the latter for £1,850. The Post Office was bought for £1,600 by the postmaster, W J Heard, on his own account.

On Tuesday the Cornish Arms went to John Backwell, a second-generation tenant, for £2,000, and Dr Brodrick bought Lynbridge House for £1,250.

On the Wednesday and Thursday the focus moved westward to Chapel Street and Ford Street, with the sale of many small cottages in addition to such interesting features as the Old Workhouse, now known as Mount Ford, the Duke of York Inn, and the Fitzford Gatehouse. The sale of the Fitzford and Westbridge Cottages, which continued until Friday, followed the expected pattern, with the withdrawal of those properties tenanted by the elderly or by the duke's employees, and the sale of the remainder, in most cases to the tenants, for an average of £110 per house.

Finally, at four o'clock on the Friday, the 11th and last day of the town sale, Frank Ward called the final lot (number 628), the Cattle Market Hotel. It fetched £2,760. The great auction had begun and ended with a licensed house. One of the surprises had been the high prices paid for the inns and hotels. The ten licensed houses that came under the hammer realised a total of £21,225.

The total amount realised by the 11 days of the town sale was £123,225.

With a few exceptions, which included most of the inns, this money was raised by local people, in many cases to buy the homes they had been living in. This conclusion was reached as a result of a combination of factors including ducal policy, public opinion, the reluctance of local tradesmen to bid against each other, and the style of the auctioneer.

The apprehension of a foreign invasion did not materialise. There is, however, some evidence of some sharp increases in rents. Houses let by the duke at 1s 6d a week, including water rates, were, within a year, letting at 3s plus water rates. Nonetheless the shadow over the town prior to the sale, brought about by the fear of hundreds of tenants that they might be losing a benevolent lord and getting a harsh one, was, for the most part, lifted. The challenge that now faced most people was not higher rents and a stricter regime, but the rights and obligations of proprietorship.

But as one cloud rolled away, another took its place. The majority of those who had bought property in the sale did not, of course, pay out of their own resources, but borrowed the money. The scheme which was most widely adopted was that based on the duke's offer to loan two-thirds of the purchase money, repayable at four percent interest over five years. The worry was that Tavistock might face a period of recession during which the repayment of the loans would suck capital out of the town's economy. The effect was certainly to delay a recovery from the contraction that had been triggered half a century before by the collapse of the local mining industry.

There remained, after the town sale, the duke's property in the neighbouring parishes, 8,500 acres of it, made up of farms and residential estates. This was sold, in a series of 118 lots, over three days, in the Market Hall, it being considered that the Town Hall would not be large enough to hold the number of people attracted by the spectacle of seeing what was to happen to what Frank Ward described as 'property which they could hardly fellow in England'.

On the second afternoon the local council brought forward its meeting from 2 pm to noon in order to allow members to attend. They were able to see Sir John Spear, now in his second term as the local MP, buy Kilworthy House and Farm for £22,650. The number of such large estates, interspersed with more modest farms and with £100 country cottages, brought in over £200,000 over the three days.

It took 21 days, between 13 June and 19 July, to dispose of the Duke's property in the area. At the end, when the sums were complete, it was discovered that the total amount raised had been £514,517. Mr Ward took a holiday.

Concerns over effects on trade

Concern about the possible consequences of the level of debt, incurred by so many tradesmen and residents of the town in the great sale, did not prevent a great deal of improvement to many properties. New proprietors, enjoying the independence of their freehold status, carried out alterations that transformed the appearance of parts of the town-centre. Property also began to change hands as appetites for entrepreneurial activity were sharpened.

Doubts, however, remained. There was concern over whether the town trade would survive the capital depletion. There was also some apprehension about what would happen to the level of rates as a consequence of the local council's decision to push ahead with the purchase of some major town properties and undertakings. Policy on this matter had been agreed by the council in July 1910, and endorsed by a public meeting in January 1911. Some delay followed, occasioned first by council elections, then by the distraction of the sale, and finally by the discovery that the purchase of the water undertaking would require the acquisition of a substantial amount of land, and would therefore be more costly than had at first been calculated. It was, therefore, 17 October before the council could take the next step, by agreeing to promote a parliamentary bill to arm themselves with the necessary powers to carry out the transaction. It was a unanimous decision, although 70-year old retired grocer John Giles had asked some questions about the likely impact on the rates. There was no support for the idea of privatisation. The chairman of the finance committee, J J Alexander, spoke for the whole council when he said that they 'must not allow anything which is both a monopoly and a necessity to pass into the hands of a private company'.

The proposed bill was published in November. Under it, the council was to be authorised to purchase the water undertaking, market, cornmarket, cattle market, slaughterhouse, council offices, town hall, shops on the south side of Duke Street, canal wharf, meadows, swimming bath, various open spaces including Guildhall Square, and the two public urinals in Pym Street and Market Road.

The bill envisaged the purchase-price being decided by arbitration, and gave the council the powers to borrow the necessary amounts. This was then submitted to a public meeting held in the Town Hall on January 16, 1912. There, a resolution of support for the council's action was moved by its chairman, Duke Street chemist Richard Doble, and seconded by John Backwell, job master and proprietor of the Cornish Arms. They were proposing a course of action which would bring a substantial part of the property of the town into public ownership. And yet neither of them could be seen as radical, far less socialist, in their political views. The same went for their 13 colleagues on the council. Only one, John Barkell, professed any sympathy for the Labour Party. They were all staid, solid, cautious, moderate citizens, some Liberal and some Conservative, who simply thought that they were doing the best for Tavistock. They included two doctors, James Snowden Smith and Charles Brodrick, and three headmasters, John Alexander, Jonathan Snow, and Egbery Phillips. Horatio Trebilcock was described as a gentleman. The others represented trade: William Alger, a dairyman; John Giles, a retired grocer; Harry Perraton, a confectioner; Henry Tonkin, a bootmaker; John Morris, a coachbuilder; and Joseph Foster, a merchant. Not the stuff of which revolutions are made. And yet these were the men who, with solid public support, introduced a major element of municipal ownership into the public affairs of the town. It was a bold coup, in which Doble and his colleagues led from the front.

The council received unanimous backing from the Town Hall meeting in January 1912. There followed some negotiations with the Bedford Office on the terms of reference of the arbitration. At one point Doble, exasperated by the delay, called the duke's attitude 'absurd and unreasonable'. It was not until late April that an agreement was signed. Before the end of the parliamentary session the Tavistock Council Act was on the statute-book, and the way was cleared for the arbitration to proceed. The hearings were to begin in the Surveyors' Institute in London on Tuesday 26 November. The arbiter appointed was A J Ram KC.

The scene at the opening session was described by one of the group of councillors, officials, and correspondents from Tavistock who attended as witnesses or observers. He wrote home: 'Here we are in the hall of the Surveyors'Institute, a very lofty room rather larger than the Bedford Hotel ballroom. The centre of the room is taken up with tables in horse-shoe form, covered with green baize cloth. At the top of the horse-shoe sits Mr Ram KC, the arbitrator. He is a white-haired gentleman with a keen, lawyer-like, but kindly face.'

The barristers representing the Duke and the Council were called Freeman and Wedderburn. Freeman presented the Duke's claim. It amounted to £53,000. When itemised this was seen to include £15,173 for the waterworks, £6,906 for the Duke Street shops, £6,095 for the markets, £6,000 for the town hall, and so on, down to £20 for 'sundry plots of land'.

The second and third days, the Wednesday and Thursday, were taken up with the evidence of E C Rundle, the Duke's steward.

He was closely cross-examined by Wedderburn on how the valuations had been carried out. Rundle was forced to concede that different criteria had been applied to different properties, in some cases potential revenue being the guiding principle, and in others structural considerations being paramount. This gave Wedderburn the opportunity to claim that the duke had applied to each item whichever criteria produced the higher figure.

Typical of the cut and thrust that accompanied the discussion of each item was the clash over the valuation of the town hall, which Wedderburn portrayed as a financial burden used for little except badminton, but which Rundle insisted was a valuable asset with considerable revenue-producing potential — (he produced figures showing that the average annual number of bookings over the previous four years had been 135).

After two days Mr Ram decided that he ought to have a look at Tavistock for himself, and he ordered a week's adjournment. The court re-assembled on Monday, 9 December, this time in the setting of the Westminster Palace Hotel, to hear three days of evidence from estate agents who had been asked for their own evaluations, and who gave support to the Duke's claim. After that it was the turn of Mr Wedderburn to present the case for the council. It was clear from the evidence of the first two witnesses, Richard Doble and the council clerk Ernest Warren, that a picture was to be presented of a town in an advanced stage of economic depression. Its council, striving to keep down the rates, was to be burdened with the management of resources that were either too grandiose in scale for the shrinking community, like the town hall and the markets, or contained no potential for revenue, like the meadows.

The tale of woe continued until December 20. When the council's surveyor, on that afternoon, told the court that among the many problems at the town hall was insufficient lavatory accommodation, the arbiter decided that it was time for a Christmas break, and the court adjourned until January 14.

The final meetings of the arbitration tribunal took the case through to the end of January 1913.

The council developed its case by arguing that many of the amenities needed large amounts of money spending on them, and that, at least in the case of the town hall, the property had been, in effect, given to the town as a free gift by the duke at the time of its construction.

One question, put by Wedderburn to a witness, gave expression to a thought that had hitherto been allowed to remain unsaid: 'If one were able to look back and see the amount of money which the dukes have got out of Tavistock, and the amount they have spent, one would see the amount spent bore a very small proportion to the amount derived, large as the amount spent may have been?' The witness agreed. This argument led to a final submission that a fair price to pay to the Duke would be £16,500.

Historic decision

On January 24, all the evidence having been heard, Mr Ram closed the enquiry and took himself off for a week to decide his award. He had, on the one hand, a claim from the Duke of £53,000, and, on the other side, an offer from the council of £16,500. While he pondered, the smart money was going on a 'splitting the difference award' of, say £35,000.

On February 6 it was announced that the award was £30,726, which, when added to the costs of the parliamentary bill and the arbitration, presented the council with a bill for just about £35,000.

A loan of the required amount was secured by the council, to be repaid at three and threequarters percent over 50 years. There was a modest increase in the rates of fourpence in the pound. The council, and, it would appear, the bulk of local opinion, felt that the town had come out of the business quite well.

The Municipal Journal carried a detailed piece on the proceedings, justifying the length of the article by claiming that 'the circumstances of the conversion of relatively so much private into municipal property are probably unique in the annals of local government.'

It was, indeed, the end of an era. And yet, as the Journal also pointed out, the stamp of the Russells would remain: 'To dispel any possible doubts as to the actual association of the Bedford family with Tavistock, there is clearly inscribed on the front of the town hall the legend — erected by Francis, 7th Duke of Bedford KG 1860'.

l The series called 'Tavistock's Yesterdays' has now reached number 19 and copies are available from Bookstop in Tavistock or from the author, Gerry Woodcock, on 01822 613597.