EDUCATION, EXETER, 1858.

In February 1858 Thomas Dyke Acland Esq. (whose statue in Northernhay Gardens needs immediate attention, which it will not be given ) gave an elaborate address on 'Middle Class Education" to the Exeter Literary Society in which he said:

"With regard to drawing, the Exeter School of Art was an honour to the city - (hear, hear,) and showed clearly what Exeter could do if its people would only work together - (Applause.)  And yet what was the actual state of things in the city?  They had a close library in the Close - (hear, hear, and laughter,) - they must pardon him for the unintentional pun - they had a great many private reading rooms in the back shops of the Fore-street - thay also had a room upatairs in their own institution;  there was also the Working Men's Room, near the Quay, which he had visited with great pleasure the previous evening;  but why was there no great city reading room?  why no great institution?  why, in a city of more than thirty thousand inhabitants was there no provision for the advancement or diffusion of science?  why no museum? no pubic library?  Was Exeter to take its place as the centre of the West of England if it did not apply itself to these subjects!"

By the end of Victoria's reign Exeter had public libraries, a wonderful museum and a university college right in te city-centre which blossomed.   Then somehow the city seemed to hit the buffers.  Of course there were two world wars.  There seems today to be a stand-off relationship with our distant, but beautiful, university campus where there must be so many excellent minds that could help improve the city.  (Wouldn't I like to see the university's gardeners and horticulturists given free rein over the city's gardens!) and, I may be wrong but, when I see the dead eyes and witness the attitude of some of the Exeter College thousands who stream up and down Queen Street I can't think these 'students' are living up to Sir Thomas's vision.  He might have approved of the coming of St Sidwell's Point Leisure Centre where one can walk without seeing a cow and row without a boat  and cycle without a bicycle and pump iron  all day and swim without seeing the sea but somehow I doubt it.   To play Sir Richard's game:  why in a proud city of more than one hundred and thirty two thousand inhabitants is there no Opera House?, why no Concert Hall? why no hard-standing for popular 'events'?,  (What happened to the Castle yard?)  why no Botanical Gardens? why so many plastic dustbins in view?  ( my favourite at the moment) why so much anti-social behaviour in the Cathedral Yard  (let us not call it green) and elsewhere? , why so much general squalour? .... ad infinitum?

Well, I know the it's easier to ask such questions than to do something about the miserable slide into shabbiness and mediocrity but the key failure is not due to lack of cash so much as lack of imagination and  it was partly because good men like Richard Acland registered their dissatisfactions publicly that something like progress was made in the nineteenth century..