Exeter

EXETER FROM THE CANAL
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON, GLASGOW AND BOMBAY 1912
Oxford The English Lakes Canterbury Shakespeare-Land The Thames Windsor Castle Cambridge Norwich and the Broads The Heart of Wessex The Peak District The Cornish Riviera Dickens-Land Winchester The Isle of Wight Chester York The New Forest Hampton Court Exeter
LEINSTER ULSTER MUNSTER CONNAUGHT


Just as the five cities of Colchester, Lincoln, York, Gloucester, and St. Albans, stand on the sites and in some fragmentary measure bear the names of five Roman municipalities, so Isca Dumnoniorum, now Exeter, appears to have been a cantonal capital developed out of one of the great market centres of the Celtic tribes, and as such it was the most westerly of the larger Romano-British towns. The legendary history of the place, both temporal and ecclesiastical, goes far back to the days when, for a late posterity, it is difficult to separate fact from fable. It is, however, quite established that here was the capital of the Dumnonii, the British tribe whose dominions included both Devonshire and Cornwall, and who named their capital Caer-uisc , the city of the waters.
With the coming of the Saxons, the river, the Roman Isca, became the Exa, and the city was called Exanceaster, modified in due course to Exeter.
In point of position, on a mound rising from the river, it was a splendid site for a fortress in the days of hand-to-hand warfare, and the military value of the site lends support to the statement of some writers that the Romans utilized the British fortifications and built a castle. In few places of its size can one see so clearly the extent of the old walled town, while the disposition and formation of its outer ring of houses, on the lower slopes of the mound, show very clearly the limits of the mural circumvallation before the city burst asunder its tight-fitting belt of stone, within which, for the safety of its populace, it had been imprisoned for centuries.