THE NEW LONDON INN, EXETER, before 1814.

Robert Southey,  soon to be poet-laureate  came to Exeter in April in one of the early years of the nineteenth century.  He was writing a book, Letters from England, ( under the sobriquet Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella,  - he would have us suppose him a Spanish visitor  -, published by Longman, 1814, 3rd Edition,)  He stayed at the New London Inn and gives us a rare glimpse of the place although we know what it looked like from the Square - viz. magnicent! - from early engravings :

"At length we crossed the river Exe by a respectable bridge, and immediately entered the city of Exeter, and drove up a long street to an inn as large as a large convent.  Is it possible, I asked, that this immense house can ever be filled by travellers?  He (his travelling companion) told me in reply that there were two other inns in the city nearly as large beside many smaller ones; and yet, that the last time he passed through Exeter, they were obliged to procure a bed for him in a private dwelling, not having one unoccupied in the house....

"If the outside of this New London Inn, as it is called, surprised me, I was far more surprised at the interior.  Excellent as the houses appeared at which we had already halted, they were mean and insignificant compared with this.  There was a sofa in our apartment,  and the sideboard was set forth with china and plate.  Surely, however, these articles of luxury are misplaced, as they are not in the slightest degree necessary to the accommodation of a traveller, and must be considered in his bill."

The New London Inn stood where  Longbrook Street meets the New North Road meets the High Street.  It is  the area now covered by Waterstones bookshop and by the student accommodation behind.

From grand hotel to grand cinema to chain-bookshop - is that progress or regression? 

NOT PROSELYTES, LYMPSTONE, 1811

This somewhat niche blog  is for the record.  After all, this well may have been the first time Lympstone affairs hit the national press! 

"The Salisbuty and Winchester Journal 21st October 1811.   On Sunday the 13th inst. three persons, advanced in years, proselytes from the principles of Joanna Southcott, were publicly baptised by the Rev. Mr Gidoin in the parish church of Limpston, Devon."

What was going on in Lympstone that The Salisbury Journal and The Bristol Mirror and no doubt other early newspapers should publish this report?  As far as I can see the only local paper, The Exeter Flying Post, did not print this story.

In any case the report was mistaken.  It was written as though these baptisms were triumphant conversions to the Church of England.  In fact the three candidates were not proselytes,  that is to say they had not abandoned Southcott.  They, and presumably the rector, simply did not find Joanna's principles to be at odds with the Anglican Church, within which were some who tolerated Dissenters and others who did not.  From what we know of him, John Prestwood Gidoin, the much loved and respected Rector of Lympstone from 1792 until 1820 would have been for toleration every time.

We know all this because of a letter to the editor of The Bristol Mirror from the Reverend Samuel Eyre, a Bristolian advocate of the 'divine mission' of Joanna Southcott.   He had read the report of baptisms in Lympstone and at once wrote to John Prestwood Gidoin, the rector, to ascertain the real facts.  Eyre received a reply from Gidoin superscribed the Lympston Rectory  and dated  Oct. 25 which The Mirror published  (23rd November 1811):

"REV SIR, - The circumstances you allude to , were misrepresented; they should have been as follows:- Three persons of riper years, Dissenters, and believers in Joanna Southcott, were baptised in the Parish Church of Lympston.  The followers of Joanna Southcott are in union with the Established Church."

It would be easy enough to learn the names of the three  persons of riper age from the Parish Registers.   I'm assuming they were JPG's parishioners.  I wonder how many believers in Joanna Southcott there were in the village at that time.  .Joanna Southcott had a huge following across the nation.  She made rather a mess of things three years later by not fulfilling her promise that she would give birth to the Messiah - but at least she tried!   She was an overweight, Devonshire dumpling, of riper age, from Gittisham, and, in my opinion, as mad as a hatter yet able to carve out a lucrative career as an influencer on a mission from God.  Well, that sort of thing still happens!

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OAKWEBS, EXETER, 1837

 At the Exeter Guildhall on June 3rd, 1837,  before the Mayor and the Magistrates:

"Mr. Charles Hubbard complained of a young urchin who had been found in his garden, destroying the shrubs &c. at half-past five the preceding morning. 

"Richard Reynolds stated that he saw the boy throwing stones at the shrubs.  The defence of the youngster was that he went in to take an oakweb, or cockchafer and threw a stone at one in the tree.

"Mr. Hubbard said that he wanted only to have him admonished by the bench;  his mother was an industrious woman, with a very large family, and he was a very naughty boy, and had been there before for breaking glass.

"The Mayor - There is no doubt that you are one of those idle mischievous boys that go about the town doing mischief.

"The Boy - No, sir, I goes to work.

"The Mayor - We rather leave it in the hands of your father to give you a sound flogging;  but if ever you come here again you will be sent to prison and well whipped.  (To the father)  I hope you do not encourage him.

"The Father, - No, sir, the boy has got more beating than all my other children; and I consider I beats him too much;  he goes to work, and I keeps him at it early and late, and I can't help when he's out of my sight."

It seems to me unlikely that a little boy could do much destruction to a bush by heaving a stone at a cockchafer but then I suppose respectable people don't like an urchin to be  hanging round their garden at half-past-five in the morning. 

This is an all too familiar case of a boy escaping prison and a whipping and being sent home to be flogged by his father.  How times have changed in respect of sparing the rod!.  We don't learn the name of The Boy' but he certainly knew how to speak up for himself.

I chiefly, however, blog this, on account of the beautiful, dialect word, oakweb,  used here to mean a cockchafer or maybug.   (Thomas Hardy, inter allios, called it a dumbledore, a name known to all Harry Potter fans,  most of whom will never experience the big beetle that once fascinated children - we have more or less chemicalled it out! of existence!  But oakweb is a word not in my dictionaries and one which I have not seen hitherto.   

Source: The Western Times, 10th June 1837.

A NERVOUS NEIGHBOURHOOD, EXETER, 1837.

 From:  The Western Times, 3rd June, 1837:

"HART and JARMAN, two little boys, aged about eight years, were summoned for disturbing the peace of the quiet neighbourhood of Garden-square, by firing cannon therein, on the day of the coming of age of our most gracious Princess Victoria, to the great injury of the nerves of several elderly ladies, and against the peace of our lord the king.

"The facts were fully proved, and the artillery regularly put in in evidence - it consisted of two 2d. brass cannons, the shortest one an inch and a half long and the other a regular bomb of two inches in length, and a bore of one eighth of an inch diameter.

"They were fined one shilling; the guns were seized, and the urchins were admonished - the bench evidently addressing the mothers through their  hopeful progeny, they having encouraged the youngsters to annoy the nervous neighbourhood."

The whole kingdom, (with, allegedly,  the exception of Exmouth, - see this same source,) was celebrating the birthday of the Princess who, though nobody knew it, a couple of weeks later would be proclaimed Queen and Empress.  

In Garden-square, Exeter, however, several elderly ladies were so much disturbed by young Masters Hart and Jarman joining in the fun and firing off their tuppenny firecracker cannons that the boys were brought before the Mayor and Magistrates and fined.  It's a wonder they could keep their faces straight!  What a travesty of justice!

I ask myself:  what happened to those tiny brass(?) cannon seized by the Bench and how much money one could ask for them now on Ebay?

Garden Square must have been a very precious neighbourhood indeed.  I haven't yet found it.

ACCESS TO NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 1872.

 From The Western Times of 3rd August 1872:

"Sir, - Would you kindly inform me who it is that holds the right to place persons at the entrance of a public thoroughfare at Northernhay to stop people from passing through in the usual course of business on the occasion of the Horticultural Flower Show on Northernhay today as I approached the entrance to the pubic path I was stopped by two men and informed I could not pass through as they had orders from the Council men not to let anyone pass. - Yours truly,  RATEPAYER."

Poor old RATEPAYER, I can see him umbrella in hand,  (this Flower Show was, like all Devon Shows, plagued by rain!,)  being turned away from Northernhay. 

As I write, families and others are still climbing up from the streets to be turned back by the dismal, yellow, prohibitory notices cable-tied to the proud ironwork gates to the Gardens.  This has been happening since 24th October, throughout the half-term holiday and three sunny, more or less, week-ends.

I'd like to think RATEPAYER had a point.   Northernhay, as well as everything else, is a public thoroughfare.   It does seem absurd that the Council men , women too these days, claim the right to give away the keys to third parties for more than three months in the year.  Is there really no legal case to be made on the citizens' behalf?     

TWO TO A BED, BILLETING, EXETER, 1855

 Sergeant Austin, of the Royal Artillery, had a billet made out in due form upon a new recruit and tried to billet him on The Plume of Feathers. Henry Petheridge, the landlord, was charged with refusing to accommodate the recruit.   In his defence it was affirmed that Henry was already billeted with five militia men who occupied three beds.  He told the court that he had offered the recruit the spare half-bed:

"THE MAYOR - Do two militia men sleep in one bed, then?

"The Defendant - Yes, they do.

"THE MAYOR - Then you had better take care not to be brought up here on that matter,  for you are bound to provide a bed for each man.  It seemed hard at first sight for a man to provide so many beds, but he took the house with these things in view, and where there were 800 men to be billetted in a city like this, it necessarily caused some inconvenience."

It was, no doubt, common enough in Victorian times for landlords to expect a guest to sleep in the same  bed, sometimes a narrow one, with someone to whom he had not been introduced. (In Moby Dick, [1851]  Ishmael famously had all the fun of being bedded with Queequeg!) but Exeter clearly had higher standards than New Bedford.  

800 servicemen were billeted on the city!  (We were at war with Russia and sending troops to the Crimea)  Billeting on this scale was deeply unpopular. 

Sergeant Austin and/or his recruit seem to have refused this shared bed. The sergeant had ended up paying a shilling to accommodate his recruit at The Elephant.

Henry Petheridge was let off lightly, thanks to the mayor and the good sergeant, and only paid the expenses.   He promised to find extra beds at The Plume of Feathers.

Source: The Western Times,  6th January 1855.

 

PROTECTING NORTHERNHAY, EXETER, 1854.

Northernhay Gardens are special.  If properly gardened and cared for,   if all the crumbling walls were made safe,  if all the unnecessary blocks and barriers were removed, they could be a credit to Exeter, the envy of other English cities and famous at home and abroad.

Llewellyn Garrett Talmidge Harvey, a chimney-sweep and a Methodist preacher of a sort,  was convicted of the rape and attempted murder of Mary Richards.  His assault on Mary in Buckland Brewer, near Bideford,was particularly vicious and unpleasant and made solacious reading in The London Times of 27th May 1874.  The rape and attempted murder, fortunately, are not our concern but on Friday 4th August LGTH. was publicly hanged at Exeter Gaol.

Ten thousand or so people turned up to see LGTH. turned off.  There is an account in The Western Times (5th August 1854) of the execution from which this is an extract:

"The gaol, as our Exeter readers know, stands on a hill opposite the Northernhay, whose beautiful slopes are kept sacred on these occasions from the feet of the death-seers.....The crowd spread from the City Gaol, along the Queen-street-road, the New North-road, from the County Gaol to Castle-terrace."

"NORTHERNHAY:  WHOSE BEAUTIFUL SLOPES ARE KEPT SACRED ON THESE OCCASIONS FROM THE FEET OF THE DEATH-SEERS"

Switch, dear Exeter readers, from 1854 to 2022,  when the City Council seems to be doing everything in its power to make Northernhay ever more shabby.  We wait to see what  Winter Wonderlanders &c. will do to the sacred slopes in this precarious weather!   Then, no doubt,  ECC will commit some further outrage.  

True, in 1854 the Gardens were, necessarily, closed to the public for a day.  In 2022 they will have been, unnecessarily, closed to the public for THREE MONTHS.

 

                                                                             

 

"BURNING THEM OUT", EXETER, 1835.

 "It is now become a practice in this city, in cases where new houses have been built, as well as elsewhere, when lodgings have been taken,and occupation gained by ladies of a questionable character, who are in general very difficult of ejectment, to proceed to "burn them out"  which has been found a much more speedy and effectual process than the adoption of legal means, to get rid of such nuisances.  

"This plan of  "burning out" is effected by employing 3 or 4 men with flambeaus and large placards, with the inscription of "Beware," on each side of the house."

This  brief report of a cunning plan, (Baldrick-style?) as described in The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 7th  March 1835, is one of the most puzzling that I have met.   Who, in Exeter, was hiring  thugs ( it would seem), to be sandwich-board-men holding olympic-style flaming flambeaux,  the implied threat being that they would burn sex-workers out of their lodgings?    Can we believe that this had 'become a practice' in the city?

The Gazette seems to have seen this as a jolly good idea.  Apart from anything else I can't imagine it could succeed,  not unless the men were doing a lot more than just standing about like so many street-lamps. Ladies very difficult of ejectment would, I guess, have been well ahead of the game. 

"Bizarre!" says my granddaughter.