A third walk along the walls (May 2023)

This time we’re doing a circular walk looking at the neighbourhood walls, around the grounds of four former villas from past centuries.  The walk proper starts at the junction of Wonford Road and St Leonard’s Road, just a short way from the village shops.  St Leonard’s Road was once an approach to Mount Radford House and the cedar tree is a reminder of the trees that lined the mansion’s drive. 

 

Walking towards Topsham Road from the junction, there are Victorian houses on both sides, with the Woodhayes Care Home formed from three of them.  The abandoned bus shelter is a relic from the 20^th century.  After the fourth house on the left there is a footpath leading to West and East Grove Roads.  The path marks the boundary of The Grove whose estate was developed for the terraced houses round about 1900.  The Grove had a lodge (where house 39 stands) and an entrance drive (houses 41 and 43 are built over it).  The wall on the left is typical of the many Heavitree stone (Breccia) walls with added stones from other quarries --- until you find something quite different.  The builders incorporated some large hard stones that have been polished in river or sea.  Why and where from?  

 

Back on the main road, the Victorian houses continue on the right-hand side of the road.  As in the road nearer the village, some of the walls have granite toppings and the remains of railings.  One property has the stumps of very thick railings --- the salvage crew in WW2 chose not to cut through them.   

The bricks here include many with a white glaze, adding visually to both sides of the road.  There’s plenty of Breccia to be seen here, including on the boundary wall of the houses in St Leonard’s Place.  There’s volcanic trap there; did someone salvage that from Exeter’s city walls?   

And don’t miss the street sign, with its “pointing finger”.   

St Leonard’s Lawn straight ahead was part of the front lawn of Mount Radford House (Barnardo Road is on the site of the house).  The road always curved around the lawn, though one old map shows a public footpath across it.

Psychologists tell us that it is hard to notice when something is not to be seen; so what is missing?  From here on, Dartmoor granite is little used.  The approach to Claremont (the second of the villas on this walk) has a gatehouse and walls of stone from beyond the city; grandeur on the cheap, costing less than granite, but definitely more upper-crust than brick or Breccia. 

The school is built on the site of Parkers Well House, whose grounds stretched from here to Matford Lane.  Some of its estate walls are intact, others have been replaced over the years.  The walls were built before the widespread availability of granite in the city.  After the school gates there is a cob wall on a foundation of Breccia; stand here on a sunny afternoon in the early summer and you are likely to see masonry bees entering nests in the cob --- and at any time you can find the small holes they use.  An old saying is that a cob wall has “its hat dry and its feet wet”; the hat is made of tiles, the feet are on porous stone – however the wall lacks protection from the weather and is slowly eroding.  (But school budgets do not include a heading for “repair of cob walls”!)

 

Round the corner is a gateway for Parkers Well House, now a little overgrown; the family sought to impress passers-by with this brick entrance; pause to look at the fancy brickwork on the curved wings of the gateway.   

Because of the slope of Topsham Road, the next section of boundary wall is much higher, and the brick walls are on a base of stone.  Hidden at the top are iron railings; they possibly survived the war, but may be an addition to protect schoolchildren.  The foundation wall here has a few pieces of water-washed stone; they are generally much smaller than the blocks seen earlier and have been used to fill in cracks where the quarried pieces were uneven.  (In other parts of St Leonard’s, clay roof tiles have the same purpose.)  

 

Turn up Matford Lane (averting your gaze from the modern development opposite); opposite you are the impressive granite gateposts of Coaver.  Just reflect on the effort to shape them, transport them and erect them with few mechanical aids!  The walls around Parker’s Well are stone, and the well itself has a pleasant stone arch.   

On the left are the sandstone walls of Parkers Well House, now playing fields for the school.  Several years ago, part of the wall collapsed, blocking the road.  The repaired wall can be recognised with its modern mortar.  Further up, a microclimate on the wall means it is partly covered by a large patch of moss.

 

It's worth a diversion to the right, into the grounds of County Hall, and a short way along, on the left is a high stone wall; this was the boundary wall of the grounds of Coaver, and there are small signs in the structure that this was once the wall of a glasshouse, facing south to take advantage of the sun.  (Edward Parfitt, who was Coaver’s gardener in the 1850s, was a nationally known botanist, familiar with the flora of tropical Africa, which may have led to the construction of a building for delicate plants.) 

Back on Matford Lane, Wayland Avenue has a dog-leg route around the terrace of army officers’ houses.  The small side wall is stone topped with brick; just round the corner is a cob wall, with a rough stone base, exposed to the elements to keep it damp, and a tiled top.  The limestone wall on Matford Lane belongs to the former rectory of the parish church, and then just round the corner is a small reminder of the fourth villa, the lodge of Fontmell.

We are back in Wonford Road, and refreshments await us in the village, a quarter of a mile away. 

 

How many different bonds are to be found in St Leonard’s?

Have you ever noticed …

how many different bonds are to be found in St Leonard’s?

“The name’s Bond, Stretcher Bond”.  Somehow, I doubt whether a catch-phrase like that would make anyone’s fortune, even when announced with Daniel Craig’s voice.  Instead, and at no charge at all, can I invite you to look at the way that bricks are arranged in the walls of houses and gardens in the neighbourhood. 

“Bond” is the technical term for the pattern of bricks in walls.  Not all walls use the same pattern.  For many years, British bricks were about 9 inches long, and about half that wide; the thickness was more variable.  Metric bricks are a little smaller.  The long side of a brick is sometimes called a stretcher.  But the important feature of almost all building bricks is that they are twice as long as they are wide – just like the ubiquitous Lego brick with eight studs in two rows of four. 

So how do you build a wall with bricks?  You have foundations, and then lay the bricks in successive courses.  After that it depends on whether you want the wall to be one brick thick, or two.  Most houses built in the last three or four generations have cavity walls, so that the outer bricks form a wall that is one brick thick.  On the other hand, garden walls are generally twice as thick.  And that means that some of the bricks are arranged to connect the two sides of the wall, so that those bricks have an end or header, rather than a stretcher, showing. 

You could build a wall one brick thick by stacking one brick on top of the one below, without any overlaps.  Only mortar would connect adjacent stacks, and the result – with a pattern known as a stacked bond – would be insecure.  (A few years ago, the BBC investigated the strength of Lego bricks that were stacked like this; they discovered that the bottom brick would be deformed if it supported the weight of a pile of Lego over 2 miles high, but experts from Legoland estimated that a pile of single bricks about 10 or 11 feet high would be unstable.)  So, for strength and stability, walls are built with courses which overlap each other.  In the Magdalen Road village, the post-war buildings generally use a stretcher (or running) bond.  That means that the bricks in one course overlap the ones below by half – as if the Lego bricks in one course were connected to the two below by four studs each.  The bricks in the first, third, fifth and all odd-numbered courses look the same.  Those in the alternate courses are shifted half a brick length to the side.  Around the cedar tree in St Leonards Road, there is an interesting variation of this, with the ends of the bricks facing outwards; that’s an end bond, also known as a header bond.  It is strong and allows the wall to curve.

It is in the garden walls around the neighbourhood that there is more variety to be found.  The need to have bricks running from one side to the other presents builders with a variety of patterns.  The simplest patterns have a course of bricks in the end bond style, followed by one or more courses in stretcher bond, then an end bond course, and so on.  The bricks in the stretcher bond courses are fixed to three below them.  (Think Lego again; the stretcher bond brick is fastened to two studs from one end bond brick, four studs from the next, and two from the third.  There’s a matching row on the other side.)  The number of courses laid in the stretcher form varies.  Around St Leonard’s you can find examples with one, three and five.  (Even numbers look less attractive, and are rarely used.)  If there is one stretcher course, it is generally known as English bond.  With three courses, that’s English garden bond, and with five courses, that’s common bond.  More complicated than these bonds are those known as Flemish bonds.  These are very attractive and also widespread in the neighbourhood.  One course of bricks is laid, Flemish style, with alternating stretchers and headers.  Then the next course is the same, with stretchers over the headers below, and vice versa.  The course above that is like the first.  There are plenty of examples in Magdalen Road.  A variation of this is to have some courses of stretcher bond before the next course in Flemish style. 

Belair, in the grounds of County Hall, has a south wall in Flemish Bond.  The modern wall to the right in the picture, is unusual in having four rows of stretchers between the lines of ends.

Before the coming of the railways, which brought mass-produced bricks to all corners of the country, there were marked regional variations in the preferred style of building.  Flemish bond is widespread in the south, and English garden in the north. 

This wall in Archibald Road is an example of English Bond

There are a few walls around us which have mixed construction, showing the need to rebuild or extend over the generations; differing bonds and differing bricks can identify them.  Most of these are in the older streets, but not all – Rivermead Road has one example.

Exeter’s oldest brick building, the Customs House on the Quay, has very irregular brickwork; maybe the builders were unfamiliar with the new material.  But the small chimney on the left hand side, added later, is mostly in Flemish bond.  That’s the King’s Pipe, where contraband tobacco was burnt.  Maybe James Bond’s predecessors had a hand in apprehending the tobacco smugglers?

Printed in St Leonard's

Neighbourhood News, January-February 2016

Keywords: St Leonards, Exeter, history, geography, beauty 

 

Have you ever looked at the hedges in St Leonard’s?

If the Tardis carried you back to St Leonard’s in the eighteenth century or earlier, the roads of our neighbourhood would be lined with hedges, to protect the local farmers’ livestock from travellers, and vice versa.  So our oldest roads, Wonford Road, Heavitree Road, Magdalen Road, Topsham Road and Matford Lane would have been muddy tracks with a hedgerow and stone walls on each side, interspersed with gates and farm buildings.  Those hedges would have been like many in rural Devon, a dense barrier of native trees and shrubs, tended by regular cutting and periodic hedge-laying, with hand-tools, of course.  There is a modern example of hedge-laying at the further end of Bromhams Farm football field.
 

At the junction of Matford Lane and Wonford Road the hedge is a survivor from the old hedgebank, hidden behind the scrub.

The nineteenth century saw parts of these roads being developed for houses, with the loss of most of the ancient hedges, though boundaries followed the old lines.  But the houses that were built needed to mark their boundaries, and new hedges were planted.  Unfortunately, it is hard to date when local hedges were planted, but some have been with us for a century or more.  (In rural areas, there are rules of thumb for estimating the age of a hedgerow, based on the number of species of tree in a given length, but those rules don’t work in towns and cities.)

The process has continued to the present day, with many more recent household boundaries marked by hedges on their own, or with walls or fences.  It seems strange, since a hedge demands more maintenance than a fence or wall does, but hedges give us a link back to the rural past, and have many other benefits as well. 

A section of wall with hedge on top (Wonford Road)

So let’s look at some of the hedges that can be seen around St Leonard’s.  We have a few examples of a countryside hedgebank in an urban setting, that is, an earth bank planted with trees like hawthorn, with their trunks laid to be almost horizontal.  Much more common in the city are hedges on top of stone or brick walls, so that the boundary is marked in a permanent way, but it looks as if the boundary is a part of the garden, a living backdrop for all the flowers and shrubs.  And we have hedges which grow alongside fences and railings, serving the same aesthetic purpose.  If you are playing I-Spy, give yourself 10 points for a hedge with a wall, fence or railings, 25 points for a hedge with two other barriers, and 100 points for four or more.

Now look more closely, and you will see how every hedge displays some individuality.  First, what kind of tree has been planted?  Is there one species, or two, or more?  Are they mixed in a systematic way?  When I was researching this, I came across a hedge that is being repaired where the side facing the road has been planted with a row of one species of tree, and the side facing the garden with a second.  A mixture may also be the result of new species colonising the hedge, as happens on farms, and provides the basis for estimating the age of the hedge.  Privet is a popular choice of tree, with laurel and holly as alternative evergreens.  There are several beech hedges, liked because the leaves turn brown in the autumn and are only shed in the spring.  There’s a fine example at County Hall.  One or two gardens have more exotic hedges, using flowering shrubs such as roses (10 points for one of these).  And, yes, we have some hedges of the fast-growing, notorious, and very thirsty, Leyland Cypress.  

Beech hedge at County Hall

Second, how is the hedge tended?  Is it cared for?  After two or three years of neglect, the hedgerow trees start to look less like a hedge and more like a wilderness.  If it is cared for, then has it been trimmed with geometrical precision to look like a wall?  Or does it have some curving shape or irregularity?  Does the hedge match the hedges on either side?  Or have different owners imposed individual styles on theirs?  You’ll find high hedges and low hedges along local streets, creating an interesting urban landscape.  Maybe that is what inspired an estate agent to advertise with the line: "Set amidst the grand avenues of Exeter's premier residential district".

Then, is it really a hedge, or a hedge-like boundary?  In suburban gardens many of us prefer variety to monotony, so mark the boundary with several shrubs or small trees, cut to the rough shape of a hedge, but really forming a harmonious backdrop to the planting of the garden.  Look out for front gardens which are marked by a row of trimmed shrubs of assorted species.  When I came to live in this area, an older resident apologised to me for the shape of one of his front garden shrubs, which he had trimmed into the shape of a cube.  But instead of having edges which were horizontal and vertical, it leaned at a marked angle.  He said that, twenty years on, it was still recovering from the effects of the 1962-63 winter, when the weight of snow had bowed the main trunk. 

Hedges can divide gardens into rooms, as happens in many country houses.  On a smaller scale, car parks are often hidden behind hedges, as happens on the St Luke’s campus.  Not only do the trees screen the vehicles, but they help reduce pollution.   
 

A low hedge to mark the boundary of a car park, County Hall

There are hedges on the hospital site for the same reason.  The offices next to the Crown Court have a low hedge for another reason; it protects the wall from careless parking.  An extension to the concept of hedges marking rooms is to create windows and doors (25 points for finding one).  One example of the latter is at County Hall, and there are others on private houses in St Leonard’s; look out for them.

A doorway or arch through a hedge (County Hall/Matford Avenue)

Besides their aesthetic interest, hedges are havens for wildlife.  Birds nest in our hedges, so if you have a hedge, please don’t cut it when there are likely to be nesting birds hidden in the greenery.  They provide corridors around the neighbourhood for a variety of animals, hedgehogs, squirrels, foxes and rodents.  Frogs, toads and newts can be found in them, along with the occasional snake or slowworm.  Butterflies feed on the hedges, and lay their eggs on some species.

Last, but not least, when we are looking for trimmed hedges and bushes, there are a few examples of topiary in the front gardens of the neighbourhood.  One is in Magdalen Road.  Go and find it!