A TREE IN NORTHERNHAY GARDENS, EXETER, 2025

Last week the Lord Mayor of Exeter processed in fancy dress into Northernhay Gardens together with the Sword of State and the Cap of Maintenance and about fifty followers, who were looking somewhat underdone and harrassed, to dedicate a tree to the victims of  the Covid Pandemic.  

There is necessarily a memorial tablet of marble set in stone and this is what is written upon it:

THIS TREE WAS PLANTED IN MEMORY OF EVERYONE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC,  MARCH 23rd 2021.

One wonders if any other public memorial in England has been inscribed in 'Pidgin' or 'Woke' or whatever this new language is to be called.  Maybe it is a first for the City of Exeter.  This would be a  sad distinction and particularly so because it is so unnecessary:  ALL WHO DIED would have been best and the city could have saved itself the expense of fifteen letters. 

In Exeter those who died were mostly of my generation and spoke the Queen's English.

Let us hope the next time His Worshipful turns up it will be to unblock the passage beween Northernhay and Rougemont.    

A BUY OR A CHIELD? EXETER, 1844

 "The Midsummer Assize for this blessed year of grace, 1844, was ushered in at a singular conjuncture.  The bells rung for the entrance of my lords the queen's judges, on Tuesday afternoon, but people were in a strange state of perplexity as they anticipated some such joyous announcement to signalize the advent of a blessed scion of the royal family of England expected by steam and electric telegraph, to gladden the hearts of once merry England.

"Notices had been very industriously published stating how it was that the Queen was hourly expected to tender an additional proof of her generous determination to extend the line of the House of Brunswick;  that Mrs. Lilly the nurse and Dr. Locock, the chief accoucher, with a host of attendants were all quartered at Windsor, whilst the electriic telegraph was waiting for a start to call the cabinet ministers to the scene of the royal birth-bed; the grooms sleeping in their saddles, ready to fly hither and thither with the intelligence as soon as the first premonitory symptoms announced the incipient stages of the royal progress.

"Well we were all thinking that if the young scion missed this world, it would not be for want of guides and directing posts, when the bells struck out and the people rushed forth into the streets, expecting to find the news running abroad that her Majesty was still expounding that important text of Genesis - which holds barreness to be an opprobrium, and sterility contrary to the holy end of matrimony.

''What ever is it? - a buy or a chield.' was the univeral exclamation, as the anxious housewives rushed forth.  Alas! there is no satisfactory resonse - 'it idden come yet'  is the reply; 'they'm only the jidges.'

The baby in question was Victoria's fourth child, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh who was born on 6th August 1844.  So it was a buy!.

A chield in Scotland is a boy and so, etymologically, is child and childe but the Devonians managed  to gender-bend the word. 

Source: The Western Times, August 27th 1844.

A SHRIEK FROM THE BOX, EXETER, 1844.

"Two little boys, named P|AYNE and BOUNDY, were charged with stealing apples frm the orchard of S. Kingdon., at Duryard. 

"It appeared that Mr. W. Kingdon was going home late one night, when passing the orchard, which lies near the road, he saw a number of boys, some picking, some eating, and some stowing away the green fruit, a quantity of which was scattered about.  He got over the hedge, seized on Boundy, and took him to Duryard, where he learned the names of the other offenders, and let him go.  He said he only wished them to have a summary punishment, and he would not offer evidence if they were to be sent to prison.  He then called a boy named Henry Crang, who proved the charge against the two prisoners.  Mr R.C. Blunt , who was in court, interceded on behalf of Boundy, stating that his family was respectable, and that he had been properly brought up.

"The father (Payne's father) (a flyman we believe) protested at his son being whipped.  He said there were others in the case, who ought to be punished, if they were not more in favour,

"THE MAYOR -  It strikes me you are a very foolish man.

"Payne - I know that, sir;  I works harder than you do;  but the others ought to be served as bad as my son.

"The MAYOR  -  You permit him to be prowling about the roads at night, robbing orchards, and now you see the trouble he has got himself into.  You are committed (to the boy) for one week, and when you come out , repent of your evil ways, and bide at home with your father and mother.  Boundy is to go to prison and there to be whipped and discharged.  (The mother of Boundy who was present, consented to this arrangement.)

"Payne was again about to say something to the Mayor, when he was interupted by Mr S. Kingdon. who said,

"You are worse than the boy, a great deal.  You are a perfect ruffian - the less you say the better.  Take yourself off!'

"The man was reluctantly turning away, when a shriek was heard from the box beneath the Petty jury gallery; and his wife, who had hitherto been silent, sunk to the ground ina violent fit of hysterics.  Several of the policemen immediately ran to her, but they were rather out of their element in endevouring to restore a fainting woman;  and the paroxysms seemed rather to increase at their approach.  Mr Kingdon called for a woman to come to her;  but there was no woman in the Hall who would assist her;  and she was carried out by the officers."

Source The Western Times 20th July 1844.

The Western Times had an opinion of Mr. Sam Kingdon.  'Mr. Kingdon's want of temper, his overbearing, we will not say insolent, manner especially to the poor.....'   Here he lives up to that reputation.  His mode of attack was often to claim to know someone who was a stranger to him:  'I know you, sir, you are a rogue and a ruffian.'  Here he practices it on poor Mr. Payne, who drives a cab, with the consequence that Mrs. Payne has hysterics and has to be carried out of the Court.

Mr. Payne, who works harder than Mr. Kingdon, has a point.  There were several boys scrumping apples and Kingdon knew who they were.  Only two come to court;  one goes to prison for a week, the other who is from a 'respectable' family is whipped and sent home.   There's justice for you!

Sam Kingdon lived in grand style at Duryard Lodge, which these days is Reed Hall, well known to the alumni of the University of Exeter.  These days you can get married there.  You might think he could have spared a few apples.

   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

"HOWLEY TUB!" EXETER, 1844.

"A flydriver named JAMES FAIRWEATHER, whose appearance indicated that reckless humour which often characterises the knight of the whip, was summoned for abusing Wm. Shipcott, an old hero of Waterloo, with a weather beaten face, white hair, and erect gait, which proclaimed an old soldier.

"The case arose from the following circumstances.The complainant has turned his sword into a wheel-barrow, and his spear into a basket of cherries; the ginger beer bottle has become his musket:  he 'seeks the bubble' in its mouth; his hand, familiarised to sharp-shooting discharges the flying cork; and his ear, accustomed to the 'hollow cannon's sullen roar' shrinks not at the sharp clear pop, which immediately precedes the tumultuous release of the excited liquid.  His ginger beer is excellent; and he ought not to be molested in dispensing so valuable a blessing to the citizens of Exeter.

"It was on the 18th of June, a day which,since the glorious victory in which our hero took part, has been hallowed in the memory of Englishmen, that he was going along the High-street, proud of his unrivalled ginger-beer, proud of the hard-earned laurels which adorned his button-hole, proud, it may be, of the Iron Duke, whose namesakes yet protecreed his shins - when he was overtaken by Fairweather, and a storm followed.   He was insulted and reviled, and made the mockery of a pack of lttle scamps, whose ragged shirts covered not one spark  of military or patriotic ardour, and the great hulking fly-man did not distain to lead them on, to hunt the old soldier through the streets clapping their hands, and shouting the words (unexplained but doubtless offensive) - 'Howley tub!'

"Mr. R Spencer, of St. Sidwells, who witnessed the disgraceful affair from his shopdoor, proved the charge; and the Mayor fined Fairweather 5s. remarking on the disorderly conduct of the fly-drivers generally.  They are certainly a most obstreperous class, and give the Bench a great deal of trouble  It may arise, perhaps, from the desultory nature of their employment, which gives them a great deal of lounging time on their stands, and tempts them to banish ennui by accosting any helpless passenger, especially such a one as, like our friend the soldier, has a little the appearance of a quiz."

William Shipcott was a quiz which is to say a person of an odd or eccentric appearance or character. The packs of little scamps in ragged shirts who scampered  up and down Exeter's  High-street were always ready to quiz a quiz if they could find one.   Especially if encouraged by one of that obstreperous class,  (neither The Times nor the mayor were ever slow to generalise), the fly-drivers.

It was the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in which William had fought and, if we can believe the report, he was wearing laurel leaves in his buttonhole in memory of that most famous battle.  Was this a custom that we have forgotten?

I don't believe William was wearing Wellington boots, but maybe!  Rubber wellies had not yet been invented.  My guess is that, having mentioned Waterloo and the duke, our reporter needed to write something about boots. 

William, the report tells us, sold home-made ginger-beer from a barrow and cherries from a basket.   He was old and odd and poor but was not going to let a mere knight of the whip get away with insulting an old soldier who had served with the Iron Duke.

Hollow cannons and bubbles:  I have written before that I like the way The Times assumes its readers know their Shakespeare &c..   The hollow cannons are from a contemporary American poet,  Samuel Woodworth .  The bubbles are from the Seven Ages of Man, (As you like it)

Pop was specifically ginger-beer at this time, in written form since 1812, but was soon to be applied to all fizzy drinks.. 

I like to think that this is the first time that 'Howley tub!' has appeared on the internet.   

Source: Western Times, 13 July 1844.

THE GENIUS AND FEELINGS OF ENGLISHMEN, EXETER, 1844.

The government's spies at the Post Office had been reading people's letters.   The Western Times, (5th July, 1844) was shocked.  At last it had been decided to investigate the 'nefarious system of letter prying'.   A committee of the House of Commons was to enquire into the matter. The Western Times commented: 

"We can say, with feelings of perfect truth, that no question ever appeared to us so painfully humiliating as this.  That England who had got rid of the alien act, who abominated the passport system, and held her head high among the civilized nations of the earth, for the personal liberty which her subjects possessed,  the freedom from restraint or observatiion with which they moved about - that this England, enjoying all this fine reputation should be detected in playing the paltry pitiful spy on foreigners deluded to her shores by the belief in the honesty and justice of her reputation - oh it is indeed humiliating!"

"Our government must effect its aims by honesty and straightforwardness - it must seek its friends and face its foes openly - and unless it can carry on the business of the State in the face of the day, it must give place to those who can adopt a system more consonant with the genius and feelings of Englishmen".

There you have it :  in 1844 there was a country called England which held its head high among the civilized nations of the earth.  The latter I suppose might include Scotland, Wales and Ireland.  In England, unlike in less happier lands, there was freedom from restraint or observation, and government was expected to be honest and straightforward.

I no longer hear about England.  Perhaps it no longer exists.  This week the Americans are said to be worried that Britain might soon become a Muslim state with nuclear weapons.   I don't think they need worry too much but, every now and then, I see videos of  English policepeople invading Englishmen's homes, usually the homes of citizens who have broadcast rude things about Muslims or who have suggested that certain crimes might have been perpetrated by Islamists.  Apparently one can be sent to prison for a long time for this kind of thing.  I have even heard that there is a movement to bring back the blasphemy law but I can't believe this!    Still, it does seem that there is more restraint about and more Big Brother style observation of the wicked public every day.

As for facing our foes openly:  is there an England to fight for?  We apparently have no soldiers. I doubt that many of our Muslim 'countrymen' will swell the ranks, rather they may find that England's difficulty is Islam's opportunity.   Oh well, if we can't go to war openly, let's just stick to fighting proxy wars. 

 

 

PLASHING IN COOL STREAMS, EXETER, 1844.

"We regret to see that the Exeter public are to be deprived of the pleasure of bathing above Head Weir.  We think, with a beautiful stream like the Exe, some provision should be made for the encouragement of this healthful recreation.  Mr. John Carew, whose delicate eyes are offended by the occasional spectacle of a few naked boys, dancing with joyous glee on the green grass, or plashing in the cool streams at three or four hundred yards distance - Mr. John Carew threatens therefore to spike the river and impale the naked little boys.  We will not horrify Mr. John Carew with the sight of the agonised victims of his spiking propensities - because we are sure that he is far too good natured a man to carry his threat into execution.

"Many a grey-headed man remembers with delight the pleasures of his bathing time, and we feel assured that the Exonians will not surrender a prescriptive right to get at the cool stream - no, not even if Mr. John Carew were to shoulder his pike with a little boy impaled upon it, writhing in agony - and to stand a grim sentry at the Head Weir to scare them off.

"If Mr. Carew really wants to get rid of an annoyance he could easily do so by projecting a society for promoting and regulating public bathing - that would put a "spike" into the nuisance, without planting a thorn in his legal pillow.  For if he really were to use the pike in a moment of unguarded wrath, his kind heart would repent it in bitterness and sorrow for the rest of his days."

It is no surprise that only little boys would get naked and plash in the Exe.

Plash is the original form.  Splash just makes it sound spashier.

I have to suppose some people did spike rivers to stop children from bathing.

I suspect The Times' columnist did not understand the first meaning of 'impale'.  - that would be an image too far.

Happily the area above Head Weir continued to be a bathing ground for Exonians for another half century.

John Carew  had been mayor of Exeter (1841) and was at this time the city's Registrar.

A SHOE CLOSER ON THE TRAMP, EXETER, 1844.

 "On Tuesday evening a large pane of glass, valued at from £4 to £5, was broken in the shop window of Mr. Adams, silversmith, High-street.  A person named Williams, a shoe closer on the tramp for work, was seen to throw a stone at the window by several persons in Martins-lane.

"He was seized , and said that he had done it to procure a night's lodging - an object which he attained by being taken to the Station-house.

"He was brought before the Magistrates at the Guildhall next morning, when the Bench, considering that he might have purchased one night's lodging by breaking a sixpenny pane, sent him to the House of Correction for two months".

This was a harsh sentence on poor Williams who must have been truly desperate when he chucked the brick.  As usual the Times' reporter gives the impression that everybody in Court, including the prisoner, was having the time of his life and enjoying every moment of the session, . It can't have been like that! 

None of my dictionaries gives 'shoe closer' but  the shorter OED had 'boot-closer' as 'one who sews together the upper leathers of boots.' - self-evident I suppose!  The division of labour was marching on.

Source: The Western Times, 27th April 1844. 

''l on nothing a year. 

  

SPIRITUAL PUTREFACTION, EXETER, 1844.

 In the edition of The Western Times of 4th May, 1844, this letter 'addressed to the editor' appeared:

"It is now six weeks since I entered your ancient city,  but only three things have particularly struck my attention, viz. the great number of churches,  the great number of unfortunate females on the town, and a pair of stocks on consecrated ground.

"Now sir, there is something paradoxical in the fact, that in the cities and towns where churches abound, prostitutes abound also.  Should any of your readers doubt the correctness of this statement, I would advise them to visit Oxford or Cambridge, or York and Leeds, (that famous town where the tories catch small fish with a large 'Hook') and they will be satisfied that my statement is founded upon fact.

"But how is this to be acounted for?  'The church is the salt of the earth', to keep the people from spiritual putrefaction.  The Bible, daily read in our churches is 'a light to our feet and a lamp to our path'.  How then can we account for such a fearful mass of iniquity abounding in this our highly favoured land? and especially in Exeter where there is so much consecrated ground, and clergy of all degrees 'with gowns so black, and bands so white, and caps so orthodox'

"How is it that we see these things.  I hope the attention of some of the reverend gentlemen will be called to such matters.  Neither prostitutes nor stocks ought to abound on consecrated ground.  They are a sad hindrance to

"APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION"

I think this must be a fake letter, perhaps one written by a Times reporter to fill space and to discomfort the church party. 

The stocks were still in use in Exeter but that was on the unconsecrated ground of the Guildhall.  Where and why were they on consecrated ground?    

"Females on the town," is a curious euphemism, widely used in these years.  I don't imagine Exeter had more females on the town than many. 

Find the odd man out:  Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, Leeds!  Leeds!?     The ' Hook' is surely Walter Farquar Hook,  the Anglican Vicar in Victorian Leeds, but  I can't see why Walter and Leeds should be here. There may be some long lost joke.

Entitlement (to all sorts of self-serving mattters) through Apostolic succession  was Bishop Phillpotts' constant claim, one which laid him open to the contempt and ridicule of many. 

   

THE HAPLESS TENANTS OF THE YARD, EXETER, 1844

 From The Western Times of 13th April 1844:

"ST SIDWELL'S. - We are happy to hear that the Parish of St, Sidwell's, are at last about to settle with the Dean and Chapter, the purchase of a piece of ground behind the Church, to increase the burying ground,

"This extension has long been imperatively called for.  The present yard, from its crowded state, is not only a disgrace to the parish, but a nuisance to the city.  Its crowded graves frequently led to the most revolting exposure  of the half decomposed remains of the hapless tenants of the yard, and threatened to overwhelm the city with a pestilence, according to the statement of bodies of local knowledge and publically proclaimed before the Commissioners of Improvement." 

St. Sidwell's churchyard , it might be argued, is still a disgrace to the parish and the city but, at least, there are, as far as I know, no half decomposed remains to revolt the passer-by.  

There is a true whiff of Victorian Gothic about this description of the churchyard, don't you think?

The citizens of Exeter feared pestilence like the plague! (joke!)   They well remembered the horrors of the cholera epidemic of 1832 and the smallpox of 1837 and yet there were clearly dramatic examples of uncleanliness at St. Sidwell's and no doubt elsewhere.

 

NORTHERNHAY OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, EXETER, 2025.

 Tomorrow the citizens of Exeter and visitors to Exeter will be permitted to walk in the Northernhay Gardens again.  The gates have been locked for the last seventy days, only being opened when the temporary owners of the people's park were ready and able to 'entertain' the many funfair-friendly.  Many of those seventy days the Gardens were a 'construction site' where only members of the incomer workforce were welcome.

It is a scanadalous irony that the overweight Mayor of Exeter and other civic dignitaries dressed up and marched in procession to the Gardens to set down their poppy wreaths with all due ceremony, solemnity, dignity and maybe a little pomposity, to confirm to the city and the world that 'we shall remember' the city's and the county's dead, this on Remembrance Sunday, only to lock the gates against the citizens before dawn on Remembrance Monday so that no-one could visit the memorial, except after weeks of 'construction' when they were allowed in to the overwhelming funfair to find Exeter's fine memorial closely guarded by plastic santas and rudolfs &c.

Seventy days is practically a fifth of a year and by the end of this year the Council will probably have closed the Gardens again; perhaps another street-food 'fest' (not on a street!) to take the bread out of the mouths of local traders.  These closures do the Gardens no good!  The damage done is heart-rending.  Exeter City Council lives up to its long-standing reputation as a gang of Philistines.

What's to be done?  The City, no doubt, needs a space for such 'events'  but not Northernhay which is the jewel in Exeter's crown.  Such events require hard-standing. The Castle Yard was once the place for balloon-ascents and other such jollities but, alas!, the Council has sold it.  There must be an answer!

(And, incidentally, I hold this conspiracy theory:  I suspect that the reason why the path through the Castle wall between Northernhay and Rougemont Gardens has not been opened for the last five years is merely because the City Council likes to lock whenever, wherever, whatever it can and because this closure makes it easier for damaging, polluting, lowest-common-denominator 'events' to be inflicted on Northernhay.   I suspect the whole 'unsafe walls' narrative might be fake news.)

This blocked passage between the Gardens is an injury and a reproach to the city. What is sad is that there is a failure of imagination when it comes to a unified Northernhay and Rougemont Gardens.  With the ancient castle walls and moats and the magnificent trees and the glorious lie of the land they really are a remarkable asset   No other city has anything like them.  

In today's Britain, gardens can be powerful magnets.  Already many people visit Exeter hoping to enjoy the Gardens. (and many were disappointed throughout the past 70 days).  If Northernhay were gardened and advertised as an attraction (A public garden since William Shakespeare was writing!)  ("The most romantic walk in all Europe!" as The Western Times was once able to claim) they would add to the reputation of the city and bring many thousands of visitors to Exeter of the kind who spend money freely on the High Street.  If the Council needs cash and the people need circuses there must be nobler ways to make money and to entertain the children than to trample Northernhay.  

A PRETTY GOOD DOSE OF PATRONAGE, EXETER, 1844.

The Western Times of  6th April 1844 set out, not for the first time,  to inform its readers that Henry Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter, (Exeter was then the seat of the bishop for Devon and Cornwall), was a decidedly worldly Christian:

     "....we beg to remind our readers , and the admirers and friends of Bishop Philpotts in particular, that admitting the efficacy of his prelatical labours they have been fitful in the extreme, when compared with his steady labours to reward & exalt the pious and exemplary members of his own family. 

" Lowe, it will be remembered, received the lucrative post of Precentor, on the nomination of Bishop Philpotts, and Bishop Philpott's son immediately stepped into two fat livings which Precentor Lowe had vacated.

"Nephew Philpott's hath a valuable living in Cornwall.

"Son Philpotts hath Stokeinteighnhead, and is also Precentor of Exeter Cathedral/

"Son-in-law Stephens is Sub-Dean and Vicar of Dunsford, and Son-in-law de Bouilli hath also the valuable living of Lawhitton.

"Here is a pretty good dose of patronage for people all talking about the primitive church, and declaring that we must recede more and more towards the primitive simplicity of the early Christian church.""  

The patronage continued far beyond 1844. It was the Cornish socialist historian, A.L. Rowse,   (A Cornish Childhood,  Jonathan Cape, 1943) who best summed up Phillpotts when he wrote that he was: "a nauseating character....a nasty political pamphleteer who recommended himself thus for ecclesiastical propmotion to the Tory reactionaries of before the Reform Bill, who recommended himself still more by marrying Lord Eldon's niece, a grabber of every scrap of church preferment he could lay hands on to serve his family -  he had seven sons in Orders and almost as many sons-in-law;  who kept clear of his cathedral city the whole time of the cholera, an oppressor of the poor, who built himself a fine marine villa at Torquay (now the Palace Hotel), from which he administered his diocese and went up to London to speak in the House of Lords on behalf of every bad cause." 

It is said that, when in the House, Phillpotts fulminated against every reform of the age in a manner that shocked even his fellow diehards and that when in his diocese, in the name of reform, he put fear rather than love into the hearts of his clergy.

The Times here consistently misspelled Phillpott's name. Perhaps they only did it to annoy because they knew it teased.

We still have nauseating bishops and we have 26 bishops in the House of Lords -   Lords spiritual, but not very!