Several years ago, I wrote a series of articles for the St Leonard's Neighbourhood News inviting you to look around at some of the interesting and unusual features of St Leonard’s. One of those was a brief introduction to the stones of the area. And that led to a puzzled resident curious about the flint nodules in her garden – imported from a long way away to be decorative!
Come with me on a winter walk to look in more detail at how local stones have contributed to the street scene of the neighbourhood. It’s easy to recognise five types of stone to be seen when you are walking along our streets and roads, without looking for decorative rocks from outside Devon. Most obvious is granite, from Dartmoor. And then there are lots of examples of Heavitree sandstone (Breccia) from the quarries of the Broadfields estate (which is why there is Quarry Lane there!). Also quite common are examples of Pocombe stone, from the ridge of the hills above St Thomas, particularly from the site of park homes at the top of Dunsford Hill; you can spot this material as it is a grey with a hint of purple, streaked with white. Volcanic trap, a very hard dark stone, much used in the walls of the city, is found in a few places, and so are blocks of limestone, some quarried from the quarries at Beer.
Walk with me along St Leonard’s Road, heading south from the traffic lights. Here are the houses of affluent Victorians, with gardens fronted by walls topped with granite. Many of the granite blocks carry the marks of former iron railings, cut away to supply metal during World War 2. There are some granite gateposts as well.
There were stonemasons working around Exeter, some on the Quay, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, who supplied the Dartmoor granite. It had travelled by rail, (or a combination of rail and sea) from the moor, much of it shaped there. Walkers on the moor today can find blocks which are, for some reason, shaped but unfinished. The stones had to be transported from the stonemasons’ yards to St Leonard’s by horse-drawn cart and then manhandled into place. As a result, granite was an expensive material, appropriate for these houses..
Look up into Premier Place, where the wall on the right (25 St Leonard’s Road) is a rough wall of assorted stone, with a lot of nice Pocombe pieces. The mortar between the stones shows a variety of styles; masons have their own styles for wall-building and repairing. At the far end of the property, there’s some 19th century Heavitree breccia. Beyond this there has been much rebuilding since the 1940s
Turn into Wonford Road, and on the left is a small low wall built of scrap stones, collected from the ruined walls after the 1942 bombing. Immediately afterwards, in the brick wall, there is a post-box from the reign of George VI, replacing one lost in the same destruction. Opposite, at the junction with Park Place, there is a stone placed to force wagon wheels away from the wall.
Old pieces of Heavitree stone make a low wall on the left, one of the few reminders of the older walls of this section of the road. Before Lyndhurst Road, there is one older wall on the left, with modern brick pillars at the gates. It’s the first example of a type of wall that is common in the city, built very carefully with an assortment of stones of many shapes and sizes. Quarried stone, apart from granite, was cheap, and Victorian masons would have used whatever came to hand when constructing walls for front gardens.
The junction of Wonford Road with Matford Lane and Lyndhurst Road marks the start of a transition from urban to rural ---at least as far as walls go. Until the mid 20th century, Matford Lane merged on a curve into Wonford Road as the through route. You can trace the former route in the bushes on the corner.
In the next issue we’ll explore the walls in Wonford Road beyond here.
David Smith
Keywords: St Leonards, Exeter, history, geography, beauty
