Regency Personalities Series-James Templer (Canal Builder)

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

James Templer (Canal Builder)

1748-1813

James II Templer

James Templer was the eldest son and heir of James I Templer, of Stover House, Teigngrace, Devon, a self-made magnate who had made his fortune building dockyards.

Templer was a Master in the Crown Office at London. He inherited the Stover estate in 1782, and began construction of a new church at Teigngrace, built in the local granite from quarries at Hay Tor. This was completed in 1787, and his brother Rev. John Templer of Lindridge House was the first rector of the church. The mining of ball clay in the area had begun to rapidly expand, and from 1790 Templer built the Stover Canal at his own expense to transport clay to cellars on the banks of the River Teign, for onward transportation by barge down the river estuary to the port of Teignmouth on the coast.

In 1776 he married Mary Buller, 3rd daughter of James Buller of Downes, Crediton, Member of Parliament for East Looe in Cornwall and for the County of Cornwall. By his wife he had progeny including:

George Templer, son and heir, who inherited the Stover estate.
Charlotte Frances Templer, who married twice:


Firstly in 1811 to Capt. Richard Dalling Dunn, Royal Navy
Secondly in 1819 to Capt. Charles Richard Acland , Royal Navy, 3rd son of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 9th Baronet, of Killerton House in Devon. He died from blackwater fever off Simondstown, South Africa.The marriage was without progeny

He died aged 65 on 21 June 1813, and is commemorated by a Coade stone monument in Teigngrace church.