Parke, Bovey Tracey

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 (1799-1859) and is today the headquarters of the Dartmoor National Park Authority.

It was the seat of Nicholas Eveleigh (d.1620), an utter 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.

Eveleigh's widow married the lawyer Elize Hele (1560–1635) (also seated at Fardel in the parish of Cornwood, Devon), who founded Plympton Grammar School (alias Hele's School). An elaborate monument with an effigy to Elize Hele survives in Bovey Tracey Church, facing that of Eveleigh.

Sir John Stawell (1625-1669) of Parke, a counsellor-at-law, in 1653 purchased Torre Abbey in Devon from Weston Ridgeway, 3rd Earl of Londonderry (1620–1672) of Tor Mohun, adjoining Torre Abbey, and was the owner in 1661 as the bird's eye engraving of that date by Wenceslaus Hollar confirms in a dedicatory canton, showing a strapwork escutcheon of the Stawell arms (Gules, a cross lozengy argent, with a martlet for the difference of a 4th son) below which is inscribed in Latin:

He sold Torre Abbey in 1662 to Sir George Cary (1611-1678), whose first cousin Sir Henry Cary, Sheriff of Devon in 1637, had sold the family's ancient seat of Cockington, situated about one mile west of Torre Abbey. In 1666 he purchased a moiety of the manor and borough of Ashburton, about 7 miles south west of Bovey Tracey. This purchase (what was later termed a pocket borough) enabled his son to be elected nine times a Member of Parliament for the borough of Ashburton.

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