A fifth walk along the walls (Larkbeare circular)

 

The summer walk ended at Holloway Street and this time we’ll do a circular stroll starting there ---- but obviously you can join it anywhere. 

Start at the gates of Larkbeare, formerly the Judges’ Lodgings when judges came on circuit.  The grounds of Larkbeare form one of the largest areas of green cover in St Leonard’s; at one time, the house and garden were classed as a detached part of Devon, rather than being in the city of Exeter.  The walls on both sides of Larkbeare Road are quite high, due to the slope to the river.  There is a change of material in Larkbeare’s boundary; it looks as if the section by the entrance was of a higher quality, so that visitors would be impressed --- and never inspect further down the road!  Opposite, a section of the wall has an overhang at the west end of the church.  St Leonard’s church was built in the 1870s, but the road is older.  Presumably the overhang allowed access to the end of the church during construction and for maintenance.  (When St Leonard’s Church Centre was being built in the 1990s, there was a Portaloo for worshippers by this end of the church, and one of the visiting judges sent a note complaining that his evening meal was disturbed by the sight of users of the facility!)

Walk down between the Heavitree stone wall and the limestone wall on the right, topped with tiles.  Part of the way down, watch out for one brown rock which is fitted in --- as it is smoothed by water it may have come from the river bank.  The wall is built on a foundation of Heavitree stone, and the garden door has uprights of this material on each side.  Beyond this doorway, the sandstone is mixed with limestone and other rocks.

The wall of Larkbeare by the riverside path is a geologist’s delight.  Name any type of building stone that is used in Exeter, and the chances are that there will be an example of it here.  There are several rough pieces of a white stone which looks like marble; it isn’t, it’s a polished form of limestone.  (It’s rather like Portland stone, or the “Napoleon Marble” used for cladding Boots in the High Street.)  And this wall is a good illustration of how different stones weather over a century or so.

Up Colleton Hill, where the stone wall is topped with hand-made bricks.  Cross into Colleton Crescent, noticing the disused letterbox in the wall; the insignia shows that this box was installed during the reign of our late Queen, it had replaced a Victorian wallbox.  Some of Colleton Crescent’s railings were lost during the Second World War, but much of the historic ironwork is still there, with fittings for early forms of street lighting.  Walking along the pavement you will be above the coal cellars, and there are still some remaining “coalhole covers”.  The missing railings have been replaced in some parts of the street; modern railings are not set into the granite walls, simply bolted in sections. 

At the far end of Colleton Crescent is the area known as Friars’ Green; Friars Gate and Friars Walk maintain the name, but Watergate was formerly Friars Hill.  The Franciscan Priory stood a little way east of the Salvation Army temple.  Looking along Watergate, you’ll see a variety of walling.  Turn into Lucky Lane, running along the rears of Friars Walk and Colleton Crescent; it is lined with old walls, not built for appearance.  They have been much modified over the decades, but the older sections show a good variety of types of stone, including a few pieces of volcanic trap.  There are walls between the plots of handmade bricks.  As a nice touch, some of the garages have been faced with Pocombe stone. 

Turn into Melbourne Place (named for Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister) and look at the decorated façade of the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  This was formerly a school; the name is over the archway, and this, like the upper storeys, has a mix of machine-made bricks and plaster mouldings.  A variety of different coloured bricks were used for the façade. 

Now walk back to where we started; at the foot of the valley is number 38 Holloway Street, a building which is listed grade II, dating from the early 16th century.  The Heavitree stone is weathered, but shows how sturdy this material can be.  Beneath your feet as you pass the building is the medieval bridge and part of a late medieval conduit, also listed.  As you return up the hill to opposite Larkbeare, the high wall on the left marked the boundary of Mount Radford House; even the grandest local houses were happy to use Heavitree sandstone! 

When was your House Built in St Leonard's, Exeter?

 

If you visit a stately home, the guidebook will probably tell you a little bit about the history of its construction.  However, it may not give you an actual date, just enough to suggest a decade or longer.  What about local houses here in St Leonard’s --- when were they built?  For a few in the neighbourhood, there may be records to show when the first residents moved in to a newly completed building. 

However, earlier this year, after writing in the Neighbourhood News about the stones in our local walls, a local resident contacted me.  Could I help him find when his house was built?  Such a request seemed a little unusual; however, I expressed a willingness to co-operate and after a little research and (I admit, some slight guesswork) we assigned a reasonable date, plus or minus 5 years.  Other information had been lost over nearly two centuries.  Maps didn’t help – nobody was producing updated Exeter street maps every few years!  So what is known about houses in St Leonards’s round about the time that Queen Victoria came to the throne?

The suburb of Exeter saw a lot of houses being built in the first half of the nineteenth century (mainly 1820 onwards).  The late Professor Hoskins, living locally in his retirement, an expert on the history of Exeter and Devon, claimed that some of our houses were built for retired naval officers who were unwilling to retire to fashionable Torquay because of the risk of a French attack on the bay.  (The government built the Palmerston Forts around Plymouth in response to such a threat, and a sub-plot in Jules Verne’s French novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea” is about attacking British naval vessels.)  That wasn’t the only reason for Exeter expanding towards Heavitree at that time; wealthy local people wanted to escape the overcrowded city, yet be quite close by.  So our neighbourhood grew and many houses were being built in the years up to 1850.  The house which sparked the investigation was one of the earlier ones. 

According to Professor Hoskins, and another guide to the buildings in Exeter, the opening of substantial brickworks in Polsloe in the 1820s meant that houses in the city were being built with brick from then on.  The grand terraces of Southernhay had been built with brick at the end of the eighteenth century, and it was assumed in the literature that this was a signal for the end of using stone for new buildings.  However, when I spoke to friends living in 19^th century houses, they told me that their houses were stone-built, and covered with stucco (rendering).  One of the houses that I enquired about had stone walls for the lower storeys, and brick ones for the top.  All this suggests that the tradition of building with stone didn’t stop with the widespread availability of bricks; stone was being widely used as a building material for another generation --- for the masons building houses, change did not happen overnight, despite the suggestions in the guidebooks.  Unfortunately, the housebuilders didn’t record how and why they had used particular materials. 

We may never know when the first brick-built houses in St Leonard’s were completed, but If you live in a 19^th century house in the neighbourhood, and know when it was built and what is under the render, please contact me via the editor. 

David Smith

 

A fourth walk along the walls

 

The walls that we have visited so far this year have generally been in very good condition; although there is little to document their construction, one senses that in our neighbourhood, the boundary walls to houses and property were well built.  One local wall which always grates with me is the one opposite the playground at the foot of Salmon Pool Lane.  There, the stones and bricks have been thrown together with no sense of craftsmanship.  The wall is probably one which was reconstructed when the area was developed and old material was used --- but that is not an excuse for something so dreadful!

Enough of grumpiness!  This time, we’ll walk from the village towards the river, starting in Wonford Road.  Just before Radnor Place, an old Heavitree stone wall on the right has had its height neatly increased with bricks.  On the left, the entry to Radnor Place is marked with a protective stone (a “guard stone”) on the corner to keep wheels away from the wall, and then there is a pleasant cob wall with tiled top.  This too is protected from wheels coming too close.

On the wall to the right of Wonford Road there are two Ordnance Survey benchmarks; it is very curious to find two so close together.  The courtyard of the Quadrant on the left has granite gateposts ---and underneath the courtyard, some of the houses still have coal cellars.  After all, you could never expect sacks of coal to be brought through the front door, could you?  Some railings survived the salvage drive of the Second World War, and give us a chance to imagine how the whole wall would have appeared a hundred years ago.  If you divert a short way up the slope of Wonford Road, there’s another very nice tiled wall at the back of Woodhayes. 

The low walls around Mount Radford Crescent seem to have been built for appearance, and give a nice unity to the road.  The left side of Radford Road starts with a wall of mixed fine stones, and then takes us past the archway behind the Quadrant; here there’s a high wall with a great deal of Heavitree Breccia, and this is matched on the right hand side by the retaining wall.

Just before the 20mph sign on the left and the safety railing, turn up the passageway on the left.  This runs between two brick walls.  On one side is an old wall with brick columns at intervals, and on the opposite side is a much more modern wall that bounds the houses of Vine Close and the end of Cedars Road.  Where the passageway turns left, the old wall continues for a short way.  I don’t know when the passageway was created; older maps show a garden with a fountain where the houses now stand. 

Turn into Cedars Road; at some stage, the road’s name changed from Cedar Road; it was built on the back garden of Mount Radford House after the stables and outhouses were demolished.  Despite appearances, the houses were not all built at the same time.  One indication of this gradual development is to be found by looking down as you walk along the pavement.  There are drainage channels crossing the pavement, some with the names of the builder of adjacent properties.  J.M.Soper, Shepherd & Sons, Mitchell & Sons.  Some of these pieces of street furniture are patterned without names, or carry the name of the foundry, Garton and King, who made a great deal of ironwork (drain gratings, manhole covers and other access covers) for the streets of the city (and the company remains in business today).

The end of Cedars Road is opposite the high side wall of St Leonard’s Church; just to the right of the bus shelter the nature of the wall changes.  Here were the footings for the private footbridge from Mount Radford House to the church.  Once again, the wall is made of a wide variety of stones, topped in places with brick.

Now you can choose to walk down to the river between the church boundary and Larkbeare.  Or return to the village; if you go along Cedars Road, use the pavement opposite to the one you used, to spot further designs of drainage channels.  From Cedars Road, a passage leads to the corner of Barnardo Road and past the ornate gateposts of the house which formerly boasted that fountain and garden.  Now (if you are sufficiently curious) walk along West Grove Road, where there are hardware examples labelled Walter Otton --- a name familiar to many Exonians for that family’s remarkable hardware shop that used to be in Fore Street. 

David Smith

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