(NO) "SOUP AT THE PALACE," EXETER, 1845

In  August, 1845,  Queen Adelaide, the Queen Dowager, came to Exeter by a special train.  With her, on the train, she brought  Her Majesty's carriage of state and, presumably, the horses to pull it. On Sunday 7th August she attended the service in the cathedral.   The Western Times,(23rd August 1845.) reported:

"The  choir and aisles were of course crowded. The service was read by the Bishop, Chancellor Potts, and Archdeacon Stevens; and Bishop Phillpotts preached a sermon on the duty of christian charity from the text Luke x.,v. 29, "Who is my neighbour?"

"[Which the poor people who used to get soup at the Palace would like to be able to answer - but they cannot, for the Bishop shut it up five years ago - gives away no soup, hs kitchen chimney never smokes there, and he has  tried to get out of paying the poor rate upon it. 

"Who is his neighbour? Not the poor and the needy: for in London he lodges at a hotel, and at Bishopstoe he is perched on a lone crag of the sea shore, where the poor cannot approach him.  This is a short answer to the text.}

"Her Majesty went to the Cathedral again in the afternoon, and in the evening took a walk upon Northernhay, and round the Castle Walls, expressing herself much pleased with the beauties of the place...."

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The Queen Dowager: Adelaide, the widow of King William IV, had been, for seven years, Queen of England et cetera  and a successful and popular consort who outlived her 'Sailor King' by twelve years.  She travelled widely and when she visited Exeter she was fifty-three and within four years of her death.

Bishop Phillpotts: For our Henry to be preaching on the subject of charity was supremely ironic.  The Western Times had fun in highlighting the essential meaness of the man.   The lost soup kitchen at the Bishop's Palace has its resurrection in the van outside the West Door of the Cathedral that hands out food to the many homeless of Exeter every week.

The beauties of the place:  This I take to mean 'of the Northernhay Gardens' .  The Gardens are no longer beautiful, just a spread of turf and too much tarmac.  They could be!  Their neglect is evidence of the mindless philistinism of successive Exeter City Councils.  Once they were the pride of the city,  a place where you took kings and queens.