"The public were highly gratified on Thursday evening by the first exhibition of Gas Lights in the streets of this city. The communication with the Gasometer erected at Mr Phillip's house, being made so far as the Guildhall; two superb lamps have been placed in the front of this building, each furnished with a burner, from which radiate three flames sufficiently brilliant to illuminate the street at a very considerable distance. The purity of the light had a most pleasing effect, and excited much admiration. The highest praise is due to Mr Reuben Phillips, Jun. by whose ingenuity and perseverence this modern discovery has been so readily introduced into Exeter, and from the success which has already attended the experiment, there is no doubt but it will meet with general encouragement."
It is, I feel, a charming image: a December evening in front of the Guildhall and the Regency public being gratified by gaslight.
I read in the Wikipedia article on gas-lighting that, outside London: "the first place in England to have gas lighting was Preston, Lancashire, in 1816." so our Exeter High Street, in 1815, must have a fair claim to be the earliest gas-illuminated English street beyond the capital.
The ingenious and persevering citizen, Reuben Phillips, son of an eighteenth-century Mayor of Exeter, went on to build an Exeter gas-company and to make a fortune. He merits one of those little blue plaques!
Source: The Exeter Flying Post, 14th December, 1815.
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