There is little record of the growth of the place at this particular period, but somewhere towards the close of the eighteenth century, the fleet being stationed in the bay, a need arose for more houses, and of a better class, for the use of the officers of the fleet and their families and dependents. These were principally erected along that part of the foreshore which is nowadays known as the Strand, and soon, we are told, people from a distance, chiefly civilians, were enticed hither either by the inducements offered by trade, or by the growing reputation of the place as a beautiful and healthy spot. In those seemingly very remote days the whole of the site on which the town now stands was a series of meadows, wooded heights, dells, and apple orchards. “On the hills above Tor Key,” one writer states, “are woods of greatest charm, split asunder here and there by tiny streams, or clearing where some one of enterprise is about to erect a house.... The meadows in the lower part are fragrant with flowers, and dotted with kine, and in spring time there is a show of apple blossom in the orchards not excelled by any other in the West Countrie....” It is difficult, indeed, now, after little more than a hundred years, for the visitor to Torquay to quite realize that the large, well-built, and commercially prosperous town consisted then of but a handful of scattered houses set amid pastures and virgin woods. By the end of the eighteenth century, two streets of houses existed, one known as George Street, the other as Cane’s Lane (afterwards renamed Swan Street), and the population which a few years before probably numbered only a few score of persons, reached almost to four figures. The first decade of the nineteenth century saw progress of a rapid character, and by 1803 several new streets had been added to the growing town--notably on the Quay, Strand, and on the ground now known as Torwood Street--notwithstanding the alarm which was at the time so prevalent concerning Napoleon’s projected descent upon the English shores.