A NEGATIVE EXERCISE, EXETER, 2025.

The Dean of Exeter is a very smooth individual who, I have heard it said, was a spoiled child used always to getting his own way.  He wanted to clear out of the Chapter House at Exeter the 'joyless' sculpture of local artist Kenneth Carter, a great man and the producer of the most impressive sculpture of which Exeter could boast.  He has 'got his own way' indeed.  The fifteen collosal pieces of sculpture were last seen being put into a removal van.  Where are they now?

For fifty years Exeter Cathedral held this treasure.   It is now lost to citizens and visitors alike. The busy Dean has jumped over all the ecclesiastical hurdles, circumvented all who might have objected  by what might be called a conspiracy of silence,  found an artist, of whom nobody I know has ever heard, to write mean things about a true artist's work and, in the face of protest, has struck pre-emptively and lo!, the niches in the Coffee/Chapter House are bare. 

Well, it is a good story and it will not go away.  This Dean will be remembered as the man who robbed Exeter Cathedral of the Testament Sculptures.  The City will be the poorer for it.  It will be remembered as an altogether negative exercise and will not be forgotten or forgiven.

THE SHABBINESS OF THE DEAN AND CHAPTER, EXETER, 1844.

 "....a certain man of great gifts, a painter by profession, and Northcote by name - finding his end approaching, and pleasant visions of his native county floating before him in his calm slumbers before his hour of dissolution, did determine to leave a work of art which should be worthy the acceptance of his native county.  He commissoned his friend, Sir. Francis Chantrey, a most cunning carver in stone, to execute a statue to be placed in the cathedral.

"At great cost of money the statue was made, at heavy charges it was conveyed to this county.  But their Shabbiness the Chapter caused it to be placed in a corner of the cathedral where the public shalll not see it without encoutering the pitiful exactations of their Shabbinesses' protogees, the vergers  (with whom they do not go snacks it is to be hoped).

"Oh it is pitifully shabby, clerically mean! to disregard the patriotic injunctions and the liberal spirit of the honourable dead!" 

I dedicate this blog to those noble souls who are currently trying to stop the Dean and Chapter of Exeter from ripping Kenneth Carter's Testament Sculpture out of the Chapter House.  Shabbiness and meaness seem to cling to the clerics of Exeter.  Perhaps they are being passed down, somewhat like the Apostolic Succession from the meanest Anglican Bishop of all time, Henry Phillpotts!  There is certainly something shabby and mean, not to say slippery and deceitful, in the current Dean's proceedings and they are most certainly  an insult to the honourable dead.

To go snacks is delightful.  I think I have heard it but it is not in my Oxford Dictionary of Slang (Ayto) nor, as far as I can see, recorded on the internet.

I apologise for losing an accent grave.  I can't remember how to find it!

https://matthewcarter.co.nz/ken-carter-and-his-sculpture/

Source: The Western Times 27th July, 1844,