George Templer
British landowner
George Templer (1781 – 12 December 1843) was a landowner in Devon, England, and the builder of the Haytor Granite Tramway. His father was the second James Templer (1748–1813) who had built the Stover Canal.
He inherited the Stover estate in Teigngrace, Devon on the death of his father, but left its running to his lawyer, preferring to spend his time hunting (founding the South Devon Hunt), writing poetry, and in amateur dramatics. He lived with a mistress and had six children by her before running into financial difficulties and selling his entire estate to the Duke of Somerset. He later built himself a house on the outskirts of Newton Abbot and married the daughter of Sir John Kennaway in 1835. He died in 1843 after a hunting accident.
Personal life
George Templer was born in 1781, the eldest son of the second James Templer. He was educated at Westminster, and inherited the Stover estate on his father's death in 1813. Noted for his kindness, his hospitality and for his lavish lifestyle, his interests lay in poetry, amateur dramatics, field sports and cricket rather than business, which he mostly left to his lawyer and others. Before 1815 he fell in love with Ann Wreford, the daughter of a nearby farmer, who moved in with him and bore him six children, although they were not married.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Templer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.