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.
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