A book with a link to St Leonard's

The dedication of the book reads:

“To all Maynard girls, past and present, especially …”

Clare Morrall’s novel “After the Bombing” focuses on an Exeter girls’ school, a thinly disguised version of The Maynard.  And so it is a book with an obvious link to St Leonard’s neighbourhood.

The school is bombed in Exeter’s Baedeker raid, and four boarding girls are billeted at the university, as the boarding house is in ruins.  The hall warden, a bachelor, is perturbed by the arrival of young women in his men’s hall of residence, but we learn how the atmosphere changes, helped by music.  And we are confronted with the formidable head teacher of the girl’s school, determined that school life will go on, despite the damage to her building.

The novel takes us forward, and backwards in time, switching between the war, and the early 1960’s.  Twenty years after the bombing, one of those boarding girls is at the school, teaching.  The ghost of another of the quartet haunts her, as does the memory of the head teacher, who has just died.  Change comes to her, and the whole school, in the form of a new head teacher, with an ambition to advance the school’s reputation.  And a shock comes in the shape of the daughter of that same hall warden, now a widower.

This book will bring back memories of Exeter’s twentieth century life.  There are numerous references to the city, including a house in Magdalen Road.  Many readers will be caught up in the intricate relations between the leading characters, and many will recognise the human emotions that arise as a result.  Recommended.

“After the Bombing” by Clare Morrall is a paperback (or ebook) published by Sceptre.

(published in St Leonard's Neighbourhood News, July-August 2015)

St Leonard's Village Fete, 27th June 2015

The Village Fete was held on Bull Meadow on Saturday 27th June 2015

Advertising Banner

Buntings and gazebos

Classic cars - how many do you remember?

Exeter Children's Orchestra

Exeter Children's Orchestra

Exeter Children's Orchestra

Target shooting

A larger target

Cream teas provided by St Leonard's Church

Concert goers (not at Glastonbury!)

Festival of rugby

The view from Fairpark Road

Super Saturday on June 27th 2015

Once again, Magdalen Road ("The Village") was closed to traffic to allow al fresco dining and for a variety of stalls to sell their wares.  Here are some pictures of the event - this time, some of my pictures were taken just as the stalls opened, which explains the lack of people shopping.

Yes, we can buy CORNISH pasties here!

Quiet as the stalls opened

Ice cream was popular

Pipers Farm staff were busy preparing hot food

Getting ready!

"I like work - I can watch it for hours"

Al fresco food

Stalls and chairs

Cafe society

Hungry as a hunter

The car parking bay offers space for stalls

Election Results in St Leonard's

In the city council elections on May 7th 2015, the totals of votes cast were as follows:
Morten Buus (LibDem) 219
Alysa Freeman (Green) 426
Adrian Rogers (UKIP) 168
Natalie Vizard (Lab) 1178
Stephanie Warner (Con) 1156

Natalie Vizard was duly elected to represent the ward on Exeter City Council.  She can be contacted on 07843 282371 or by email to cllr.natalie.vizard@exeter.gov.uk or on Twitter @NatalieVizard

The turnout in the election was 79.08% This was the highest turnout of any of the 13 wards being contested in these elections - Well done St Leonard's!

Super Saturday on May 30th 2015

Magdalen Road was closed to traffic on Saturday to allow a street party with stalls.  Here are some reminders of the event.

Advertising banner - this was in St Leonard's Road at the junction with Wonford Road

A flag at the eastern end of Magdalen Road village

When was the last time you saw bales of hay in the village?  Pipers Farm provided these for their customers eating burgers and hot-dogs

Changing rooms were inside!

Cafe society, complete with table-cloths

Imaginative ways of holding the corners of the gazebo in place!

More cafe cociety

I can't think of any stories that start with a salad; can you?

More al fresco food

Stall selling fantasy pictures

Normally, you don't loiter on the pedestrian crossing here

The gazebo is specially clean, to judge by its location

The day wasn't complete without an ice-cream, made locally, of course!

Sir John Betjeman and St Leonard’s

I recently acquired a collection of the late Sir John Betjeman’s radio broadcast talks, and was surprised and delighted to find mention of our neighbourhood  in his account of architecture in British towns and cities.

Sir John Betjeman (image copyright BBC)

 On Friday 11th June 1937, John Betjeman (as he was then) spoke about Exeter in a series called “Town Tours”.  He wrote of the traffic jams in Exeter’s High Street, the “inappropriate fronts of shops clapped onto medieval buildings” there, and the olde gift shops (so olde that they must be new).  But, he said, there is another side to Exeter, a city of fine buildings that the racing motorist would miss.  So, “move to Mount Radford or Victoria Park Road” where the retired people of the city are in a place as quiet as a Devon village.  “The houses are covered with cheerful stucco.  They are plain and set back in large gardens filled with all the shrubs and flowers that grow so easily in the mild Exeter climate”.  “What a genius the man who designed these houses must have been”.  The poet describes a walk along one of these roads, not identified, where “with the blue afternoon sky, the flowering creepers, the yews, the long walls, the warmth, I felt I was in Italy”. 

(It is interesting that he refers to the area as Mount Radford.  Ordnance Survey maps of the 1930s show the area as St Leonard’s Ward, with the Mount Radford name attached to a small part of the neighbourhood.)

However, after this praise, he continued: “I wish I could say that her newer houses were good.  I have seen worse.  Indeed one speculative builder’s estate, on the road to Topsham and opposite the barracks, is really excellent – a well-chosen brick and well-proportioned houses.  Each house is designed to command a view.  The Exeter Council estate at Burnthouse Lane is not as good.”  (He is referring with favour to the houses around King Henry’s Road, some of which were designed in the arts and Crafts style by the noted architect Louis de Soissons.)  In a second broadcast, two weeks later than the one he gave about Exeter, he summed up what he had found as he toured several provincial cities.  “in no town, except one small estate [in Exeter] did I find speculative builders’ estates that were anything but an eyesore”.

Besides his scorn of the council’s design of an estate, Betjeman was critical of the way that the council had allowed developments in the 1920s and 30s in the city to be “treeless deserts of red brick”, because he had found the 19th century streets to be blessed with their many trees.

What would Sir John feel if he could return to St Leonard’s today?

(extracts taken from “Trains and Buttered Toast”, John Murray, 2006 (edited by Stephen Games))

Paris Street roundabout, Exeter

For many years, Exeter City Council has been discussing what to do with the site of the present bus station, which has passed its "best before date". There is a strong lobby for a new theatre; however, there is a need to replace the ageing swimming pool, which is also no longer at its best. So, the council has agreed plans for a new pool, on the bus station site. Nonetheless, the lobbyists for a theatre and the lobbyists against spending money to build a new swimming pool remain vocal. In exasperation I wrote a letter to the Express and Echo, the city's newspaper and it was published today (9th April 2015). The site is in the map below.  It is on the edge of the St Leonard's area

choice of wordpress themes

Exeter Cathedral is off the map to the south-west.

Here is my letter:

 Dear Editor
  I am confused. For years, I thought that the centre or heart of Exeter was in the High Street or near the Cathedral. Now I find that the proponents and opponents of the new swimming pool insist that the site of the new building will be at the heart of Exeter.
I suspect that it will surprise many residents and visitors to be told that Paris Street roundabout (or a site overlooking it) is at the centre of our city. Most visitors will not have given the roundabout a second glance as they negotiate the traffic on their way to the city's historic heart, or the shops or the car parks.
 Despite the obvious importance of Paris Street roundabout to those visitors to the city who want to see the heart of Exeter, guide books to the city do not appear to mention it at all. There is no literature about it in the Tourist Information Centre, and as yet, no Redcoat guided tours include it - a very serious omission!
 So, for the benefit of visitors and residents, here is a brief description of the buildings and facilities that surround this iconic site. On one side is a car, coach and bus park attached to the bus station. On the adjacent corner is a twenty-first century building housing a multiplex cinema, a car park and flats; there is no other structure in the city quite like this. On the next corner, two buildings vie for interest. One is a mid-twentieth century office block, housing the Jobcentre and beside that is a modern hotel, one of a national chain. Crossing the road from there one reaches a block of sheltered housing, adjacent to Exeter's very popular (but dated) indoor swimming pool. In the final corner is an inn, currently closed, probably because it could not cope with the large number of visitors at this must-see spot in the city. A short walk from the roundabout in one direction will bring the interested visitor to the doors of a further twenty-first century building, a factory site now given to housing students. Walk in the opposite direction, and you come to the Barnfield Theatre, conveniently sited within walking distance of the heart of Exeter.
Sincerely
David Smith
St Leonard's, Exeter

The sentence in italics was not printed; did the editor think that it might be a red rag to a bull of pro-theatre lobbyists? I wonder!