Teat's Hill

Thomas Teat was a rope layer. In 1665 he was paid £880 by the Navy’s local agent for 20 tons of cordage - a huge amount of money back then. His business was clearly a large and successful one and the town’s largest rope walk was to be found on that plot of land that we still know today as Teat’s Hill. The walk itself survived well into the nineteenth century.

Quite what land he owned and how extensive his operations were is unclear but we know that in 1676 he acquired “two fields, Bull Park and Stone park, and a “landscore”, Fairstone, which lay to the south of the present Clovelly Road”. He lived, according to Bracken, at Slade’s Hill, near the shipyards”.

EH 17 June 2005