Exeter

by Sidney Heath

But the Exe, in a quiet way, has much to boast of in the nature of beauty and romance, particularly where it flows past the wooded grounds of Powderham Castle, the Devonshire seat of the great Courtenay family. Truly there is much to redeem modern Exeter and make it interesting over and above its historical atmosphere. Yet with comparatively few vestiges of age the city has an historical past. In both a religious and a military sense she has played a part in the annals of England, and more than one ancient document in the Library of the Dean and Chapter bears testimony to her honour, her valour, and her glory.

It is a city which has the impress of many ages and many minds stamped upon it. Here each influence—military from the Roman legions, ecclesiastical from the Saxon prelates, feudal from the Norman lords—has sunk deeply into the land, and has affected the general plan of the numerous buildings, as it has moulded the slowly succeeding phases of the civic and the religious life. It is no mere dream of the early ages, no sentimental reverie of mediævalism. It is enough to go through the streets, noting the remnants of the ancient walls, the brutal strength of the surviving fragment of the castle, the sheltered position of the tidal basin, the many churches dedicated to the honour of Saxon saints, the proud beauty and massiveness of the Cathedral, if one would realize, not the fancies of the artist and the poet, but the hard facts of history that made the ancient days so great, and which have caused our own days to be so full of their memories.

THE QUAY

As compared with the sister counties of Cornwall and Dorset, Devonshire is not particularly well represented in memorials of the Roman occupation, although an immense number of Roman coins have been unearthed at various times. Coins, however, unless found with definite structural remains, indicate presence rather than a settled occupation, for large quantities of the Roman coinage must have continued in circulation long after the last of the legions of imperial Rome had departed from British shores. The few Roman antiquities of Exeter that have been found are important in a comparative sense, although they contrast poorly in structural character with those of our other Romano-British towns. It has been held that not only were the foundations of the city walls Roman, but part of the existing remains of Rougemont Castle have also been assigned to this period.

Mr. L. Davidson was of opinion that the old church tower of St. Mary Major (now removed) exhibited traces of Roman work, and foundations presumed to be Roman were noted by him as having been found at the corner of Castle Street and High Street, in St. Mary Arches Street, Bedford Circus, Market Street, South Street, and Mint Lane.

In 1836 more definite structural remains were found in High Street, consisting of a family sepulchral vault, 7 feet square, arched over, and containing five coarse cinerary urns arranged in niches around its interior. This was discovered behind the "Three Tuns" inn, and during the same year at a great depth below the site of the County Bank, a low-arched chamber was found in which were a quantity of bones of men and animals.

No Exonian find, however, exceeds in interest the discovery, in 1833, of a bath and tesselated pavement behind the Deanery walls in South Street. The walls were of Heavitree stone and brick, and the original pavement was of black-and-white tesseræ set in concrete. The associated remains of a thirteenth-century encaustic-tile pavement indicates the use of the old Roman bath a thousand years or so after it had been made. Several other tesselated pavements are recorded as having been found in Pancras Lane, on the site of Bedford Circus, and on the north side of the Cathedral near the Speke Chapel. In 1836 a small bronze figure of Julius Cæsar (now in the British Museum) about three inches in height, was dug up during the removal of some walls in the Westgate quarter of the city. The only recorded find of a military weapon is the bronze hilt of a dagger unearthed in South Street in 1833. This is of more than passing interest, as it bears the name of its owner—E. MEFITI. ĚO. FRIŠ.—which has been read thus: "Servii or Marcii Mefiti Tribuni Equitum Frisiorum"—Servius or Mercius Mefitus, tribune of the Frisians.

The antiquary Leland mentions two Roman inscriptions as built into the city wall near Southernhay, but they are gone, and besides the inscribed dagger we have only a seal of Severius Pompeyus, and sundry graffiti or funereal pottery, in the way of literary relics of Roman Exeter. The poverty of Devonshire in memorials of the Roman period is shown by the fact that, outside Exeter, there are not a dozen places in the county which have yielded Roman vestigia other than coins.