Exeter

by Sidney Heath

The hospital to-day is one of the secular buildings of Exeter most worth visiting, with its gabled houses, dormer windows, and garden plots. An archway leads into the courtyard, around which on three sides are grouped the houses of the twelve pensioners; the chapel occupies the fourth side of the quadrangle.

ST. MARY STEPS

The Magdalen, or Leper, Hospital, just without the South Gate, was founded sometime before 1135, for in 1136 we find that Bishop Bartholomew permitted a continuance of the ancient right by which the lepers were allowed to collect food twice a week in the market, and alms on two other days, to all of which the healthy members of the community naturally objected. In 1244 Bishop Bruere resigned the guardianship of the leper hospital to the corporation, and was given in its stead the mastership of the hospital of St. John. One of the mayors of Exeter, Richard Orange, was a great patron of the lazar house, and when he himself contracted leprosy he took up his abode in the hospital, where he died and was buried in the chapel. Even so late as the sixteenth century there would appear to have been lepers in Exeter, for we find that in 1580 no one was to be admitted to the Magdalen Hospital except "sick persons in the disease of the leprosy".

In South Street is College Hall, or the Hall of the College of Priest-Vicars or Vicars Choral, a fine oak-panelled apartment. The original hall was built by Bishop Brantyngham about 1388, and access was then gained to it from the Close; the houses of the priest-vicars being arranged on each side of a green. All this has now disappeared with the exception of the hall, which was rebuilt in the fifteenth century. At one end is a gallery upon the upper panels of which are paintings representing former bishops of the diocese, beginning with Leofric. On the carved mantelpiece is the date, 1629, and the owls which constitute the punning, or allusive, arms of Bishop Oldham. Near the hall a road leads into the Close, passing the church of St. Mary Major, a modern building replacing a beautiful old one which appears to have been needlessly destroyed. On the eastern side of the Close is a picturesque Elizabethan building known as Mol's Coffee House. At the time of the Armada it was a private residence. In 1596 the original house was pulled down and the present building erected. On the introduction of coffee into England it was opened as a Club and Coffee House by an Italian named Mol. As such it was a well-known and popular resort with the citizens of Exeter and the squires of the neighbourhood until 1829. It is now used as a shop by a firm of fine-art dealers, but the fine "Armada" room upstairs is willingly shown to all visitors who express a wish to see it. It is a good panelled room with low windows, and an elaborate frieze of shields bearing the arms of many ancient Devonshire families, among them being those of Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and General Monk. Adjoining Mol's Coffee House is the very small Church of St. Martin, now but rarely used for divine service. On the Catherine Street side of the church is a building, formerly an almshouse, which has an attached chapel of much interest dedicated to St. Catherine. The chapel is conjectured to have been built by the Annuellor monks, whose college originally stood on the site of Mol's Coffee House, where traces of it may still be seen in the cellars. The narrow passage of St. Martin's Lane, known to the present-day citizens as "Luxury Lane", on account of its shops, leads direct from the busy High Street to the Cathedral Close.

THE CATHEDRAL

The present cathedral church of the diocese of Exeter may be said to be the third building that has stood on the site. Nothing remains of the Saxon church elevated to the dignity of a cathedral when the bishopric was removed from Crediton, and of the Norman church erected by Warelwast, a nephew of the Conqueror, only the two massive towers are standing, the remainder of the building belonging almost entirely to the late Decorated style, of which it is one of the most beautiful examples we possess.

The city of Exeter does not appear to have been divided into parishes until the year 1222, in pursuance then no doubt of Archbishop Langton's Constitution of the same year. The Cathedral itself was first constituted a parish by being placed under the charge of a single dignitary, the dean, by Bishop Briwere, in 1225.

Four years after he ascended the throne in 1042, Edward the Confessor gave the united bishopric of Crediton and Cornwall to his chaplain, Leofric, who, observing that Crediton was an open town, difficult to fortify against the Danish raiders, obtained from Pope Leo IX permission to remove the episcopal see to Exeter, when the Benedictine minster of St. Mary and St. Peter became the cathedral church of the diocese.

Although no part of this church remains, an ancient seal of the Cathedral is of special interest as showing some of the architectural features of the Saxon church. It depicts the west front with two towers, the northern square and the southern circular, the latter surmounted by a cross, and pierced by three round openings in the walls. There are two porches, one in the centre the other in the north tower, and the walls show indications of characteristic Saxon masonry. On the central roof is a large flêche or turret of two stages carrying a weathercock on a very tall shaft.