Warspite Gardens, a quiet cul-de-sac on the new Manadon estate, is named after one of the most famous warships to have been launched at Devonport Dockyard.
It was on 26 November 1913, less than a year before the Great War began, that the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship slipped into the Hamoaze.
In 1916 she was a participant in the Battle of Jutland, it was the first and, as it transpired, the largest engagement in her colourful 34-year career. Hit fifteen times, she came close to sinking, but survived and managed to limp back to Rosyth and undergo repairs.
Twice refitted between the wars, Warspite was nicknamed ‘The Old Lady’ after a remark made by Admiral Andrew Brown Cunningham (‘ABC’) whose flag she flew in 1943. She had by then already negotiated the Battle of Narvik, April 1940, Cape Matapan, March 1941 and Crete, May 1941, where she was again hit. Struck by a German glider bomb during the landings at Solerno, she was once again taken to Rosyth for repairs. In June 1944 she was deployed at Normandy where she acquired another of her impressive tally of fourteen battle honours.
Sold for scrap in 1947, Warspite, dogged by steering problems ever since Jutland, broke free of her anchor and went aground off Prussia Cove; she was famously scrapped in situ over the next three years.
