Teignmouth Lifeboat Station

The Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Royal Benevolent Society sent a lifeboat to Teignmouth in 1851. It was kept near the Custom House in an earlier boathouse on the beach. In 1854 the Benevolent Society transferred its lifeboats to the RNLI. A new boathouse was provided on The Den with the doors facing the harbour and the River Teign. On 10 October 1907 the lifeboat Alfred Staniforth was launched to aid the schooner Tehwija which had run aground near the mouth of the river with eight crewmen on board. It took the lifeboat crew two attempts to row out over the bar at the mouth of the river into the heavy seas. The ship's crew were pulled off but within fifteen minutes the storm had…

The boathouse is a single storey masonry building. The slate roof overhangs both sides by a considerable extent and is supported on upright posts. When it was refurbished for its 1991 reopening, a fund-raising gift shop was installed under the eastern overhang. Large doors open onto the road. When the lifeboat is to be launched, a small County tractor (RNLI No. TA21; registration WCL 764X) pushes it on its 'bedstead' carriage down the road opposite to a slipway on the harbour.