Parke is an historic estate in the parish of Bovey Tracey in Devon, England. The present mansion house known as Parke House, a grade II listed building situated 1/2 mile west of the centre of the town of Bovey Tracey and on the opposite side of the River Bovey, was rebuilt in 1826/8 by William Hole and is today the headquarters of the Dartmoor National Park Authority.
Descent
Eveleigh
Parke was the seat of Nicholas Eveleigh, a junior barrister, who served as Steward of the Stannary Court of Ashburton, Devon. He died aged 56 when the roof of Chagford Stannary Courthouse collapsed, killing him and nine others. His "sumptuous" monument with an effigy survives in Bovey Tracey Church.
Hele
Eveleigh's widow married the lawyer Elize Hele , who founded Plympton Grammar School. An elaborate monument with an effigy to Elize Hele survives in Bovey Tracey Church, facing that of Eveleigh.
Stawell
Sir John Stawell of Parke, a counsellor-at-law. In 1653 he purchased Torre Abbey, Torquay. He married Sarah Stephens, a daughter of Nathaniel Stephens, of Eastington in Gloucestershire, twice a Member of Parliament for Gloucestershire. He had at least three sons, the eldest of whom, William Stawell, MP, erected a mural monument to his father and younger brother in Bovey Tracey Church. William Stawell, son and heir, of Parke, was elected nine-times a Member of Parliament for Ashburton in Devon, due to his patronage derived from his ownership of a moiety of the manor and borough of Ashburton. He died unmarried.
(Dunning)
Pevsner suggests that Parke, Bovey Tracey, was a seat of the prominent lawyer and politician John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton, but he appears to have confused it with a farmhouse called "Park" within his manor of Widecombe-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor, to which shortly after his acquisition of that manor he had "added a room or two". This farmhouse he enlarged and transformed into a house called Spitchwick Park.
Clapp
It was the seat of George Hunt Clapp, a barrister and a bencher of the Middle Temple, and in 1798 a governor for life of the Magdalen Hospital in London. His inscribed mural monument survives in Bovey Tracey Church. His origins are revealed by the will of his grandfather George Hunt of Northwick, signed 31 October 1766. He leaves all his freehold lands and tenements in the parishes of North Bovey and Throwleigh, immediately upon his own decease, to "my grandson George Luxton, son of Thomas Luxton and Elizabeth his wife, my daughter, of Winkleigh, Esq.," with remainders to " my granddaughter Elizabeth Luxton, sister of the said G. L.," and "my granddaughter Mary Luxton, younger sister of the said G. L." He leaves Tarr Mill in S. T., immediately after his decease, to "my grandson George Hunt Clapp, son of Robert Clapp and Mary his wife, my youngest daughter, of Ottery St. Mary, gent.," with remainders to " my grandson Francis Hunt Clapp," and others.
Hole
William Hole (1799-1859)
William Hole of Stickwick, purchased the nearby estate of Parke in 1825. He was the only son and heir of Robert Hole who built Stickwick in 1780-2, by his wife Anne Pitts, a daughter of Joseph Pitts of Kiln in the parish of Drewsteignton, Devon. He was educated at Harrow and in 1822 married Susan Kitson, eldest daughter of Rev. William Kitson, of Shiphay, Devon. In 1826/28 he demolished the ancient house at Parke and rebuilt it as the present surviving house.
Major William Gerald Hole, son, who was educated at Winchester and Merton College, Oxford. He served in the Devon Imperial Yeomanry at Gallipoli and in Palestine during World War I. In 1905 he married Mildred Bingley, daughter of Rev. John Bingley of Woodford, Torquay, by whom he had an only daughter and sole heiress Geraldine Hole, who in 1939 married Fleetwood Hugo Pellew of Coppelia House, Moreton Hampstead, Devon, and left one daughter. William Gerald Hole presented a stained glass window to Bovey Tracey Church depicting the Road to Emmaus, forming the south window of the Lady Chapel. He bequeathed the Parke estate, comprising the house and 239 acres, to the National Trust. Several inscribed mural monuments to the Hole family of Parke, Stickwick and Crownley, survive in Bovey Tracey Church, also the east and south windows of the Lady Chapel, donated by the family.
