REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY, EXETER, 2026

In addition to heart-felt remembrance there is a life lesson that was reinforced by the Remembrance Sunday Service, 2026, held at our splendid war memorial.  (the work of the Exeter sculptor, John Archer  - OK, he was born in Newton Abbott) The ceremony took place in  Exeter's Valhalla, Northernhay Gardens, yesterday,.  The lesson is that things can change for the better even in a Degenerate Age.  Whoever they were who worked hard to organise the service, they deserve the congratulations and the gratitude of the citizens.   It was an infinitely superior and a quite different experience to the Remembrance Service of 2025.  It was not just better than in recent years, it was totally different.  Hundreds turned up for the ceremony.  I am sure many more will be there next year.

And yet the form of the Service was the same as ever.  The same ceremony, the same poem, the same music, the same bugle calls, the same two minutes silence.  Nothing of that had changed.  Nothing needed to change.  Isn't that what we call tradition?  And is not tradition a beautiful concept, a binding force, a force that strengthens us all?  Everybody who was there felt so.  And the sun was shining.

What had changed was the care and attention given to the preparation for the ceremony by the organisers.  Last year, I for one had the disconcerting, I hope mistaken, impression that no one in Exeter City Council gave tuppence for Remembrance Sunday.   The whole enterprise seemed to me to be depressingly perfunctory and, what was even more difficult to forgive, the Gardens, the war-memorial, the wreaths laid in remembrance, were closed to the Exeter public and to the City's visitors by the Council the very next day in order that preparation should begin for that lowest-common-denominator, uninspiring 'Winter Wonderland'.  This year we have been given a few days respite.  Yesterday the Gardens were looking their best.  In a few weeks time they will have been trampled to mud by families who will have spent more money than they can afford on ephemeral pleasures and tatty merchandise.  The Gardens will not look so good again until next November.

Let us, however, be positive.  Remembrance Sunday was well done in Exeter in 2026 and people noticed it.  There is still a yearning for excellence in this city and the people respond where and when they find it.  It was hard evidence of how things can be improved, how things can get better. We live in hope.

 

   

GENTLEMANLY AMUSEMENTS, EXETER, 1845.

The Western Times of 25th October 1845, in response to a letter to the Editor, had much to say about military flogging.  Here is an excerpt from the letter:

 "Mr. Editor, - I am sorry to observe the system of flogging in the British army appears on the increase rather than decrease, notwithstanding the efforts of the press and the voice of the nation is raised against this inhuman and revolting practice.

"During the short stay of the King's Dragoon Guards in this city, the officers have amused themselves by tying up and causing the backs of some under their command to be lacerated and torn under the mistaken notion of making the men better soldiers, or to deter others from violating military discipline.

"On Saturday week one of these gentlemanly amusements took place at the Exeter barracks".

* 

Flogging....on the increase:  I find it hard to believe that this was true in 1845.

The officers have amused themselves:  Whatever else, this is unfair to the Dragoons.  I am quite sure next to no officers found carrying out punishments as laid down in Queen's Regulations amusing. 

What follows the letter above is a somewhat over the top (I thought), account of military flogging by 'one who had been flogged' -  (but  20 years earlier and not in Exeter.)  I found this letter over-the-top but of interest in itself.  This anonymous writer was apparently tied to halberts i.e. halberds.  I thought that practice had gone out of date much earlier. 

Elsewhere in this edition, The Times' columns make comments on the officer-corps which carefully avoid naming any particular regiment but no doubt are aimed at the 'flash' officers of the Dragoons at the Exeter Cavalry Barracks.

"It does strike us as extremely irrational to expect good order in a regiment whose officers give themselves up to riotous living and indulgence in brutal sports."

As also:

"It is not by driving tandems nor possessing 'sporting' dog carts, nor a profuse expenditure of money that respect can be won nowadays from any body of British subjects."

:

LOVE OF PELF, EXETER, 1845.

 "A tradesman in South-street, residing near Trinity Church, had his shutters painted, and for convenience of drying placed them in the church-yard opposite.   The Reverend Pedlar Shield, coming by, exclaimed with great indignation, that it was horrid thus to desecrate holy ground. He threatened to visit the painter with his wrath, and had the shutters instantly removed.

"Nice man, this Pedlar Shield or Shield Pedlar, to talk of desecrating holy ground with a few shutters!  We should like to know what he calls desecrating holy ground - if jilting a young maiden without money, and marrying a mature one with money, and expressing neither remorse  nor contrition for his false promises and broken vows - be not desecration.

"The painter put a harmless color upon the shutters, but this Reverend Pedlar put a sordid color upon his love of pelf, and under the plea that the young lady was not staid enough to be a parson's wife, he left her' she being unprovided with fortune, to ally himself to a lady whose pockets were full of  gold, but whose age, habits, and education, disqualified her from those visits of mercy and sympathy, which the clergyman's wife, commencing in her youth, is qualified to discharge with so much benefit to those who have the privilege of receiving them.  A remarkable nice man this Pedlar Shield to talk of desecration, say we.  "

*

Well, for once I can't agree with the reporter of The Western Times ( 25th October 1845.)  The Reverend Shield Pedlar,  Rector of  the Trinity Church was quite right to object to freshly-painted  shutters being put out to dry in the churchyard.  There's too much of that sort of thing.  It's like those tradesmen of Exeter today who fill the streets with unsightly dustbins and  piles of rubbish.  That too is a form of sacrilege, not against the sacred Christian church but against our sacred city of Exeter! 

But the Reverend Shield Pedlar was an enemy of The Times.  He was a Bishop's man, an active enemy of nontrinitarians, a Conservative, Chaplain to the Mayor, and, in the opinion of the newspaper, a bounder.

The Rev. Pedlar had been the Curate at Silverton.  The daughter of the Exeter brewer, Ben Salter, had met him when she went to a party there.  He declared his love for her and she expected to be his bride. He came to Exeter and dined at her father's table.  He discovered she had no great dowry but he also discovered that her father, Ben Salter, who was a devout Anglican, was a close friend of the Sub Dean at the cathedral.  The Sub Dean spoke to the Dean and, wonder upon wonders, this penniless Curate became the Rector of Trinity Church in South Street.  This at least was the newspaper's understanding of events.  He then, shock and horror!, jilted the brewer's daughter and subsequently married Miss(?) Shield, a lady who, the newspapers pointed out, was twice the age of the jilted one  but very wealthy.  In April(?) of 1844, a Court of Arbitration valued the younger lady's loss at £300.

Pedlar Shield or Shield Pedlar:  It was clearly part of the marriage contract that our Rector should take the Shield name.  The Times seems to be hinting perhaps that it was the wife who 'wore the trousers'.

Color:  In 1845 one would have expected colour,  I just wonder if this was one man's error, (one who had been reading too much American fiction!,)  or somehow an, perhaps a regional, accepted alternative. 

Staid:  The implication is that the brewer's daughter was somewhat wild, fanciful, fidgety, something like that.  She sounds more fun to me.

disqualified:   There was clearly a wide and general acceptance that being a parson's wife was tantamount to a 'job' and a job which the newspaper regarded Mrs Shield Pedlar not to be able to do.  I wonder what was it about her habits and education that made her, reputedly, unfit?  Had she had too much education or too little?

How the world has changed! It must be profoundly difficult for the children of the 21st Century to understand a society where women could take men to court for breaking off a relationship.

  

"AN OLD TAR", EXETER, 1845.

 Under this title The Western Times of 18th October 1845 drew the attention of its readers to 'Lake' thus:

"- There is an old man called Lake, residing at Atwell's new alms-houses, on the New North Road, who was on board the 'Culloden' on the first of June, 1791, Lord Howe's victory, and on board the same ship, in Earl St Vincent's battle on the 14th February, 1797, and on board the 'Neptune,' Captain Fremantle, in the battle of Trafalgar, 21st Oct., 1805."

Today being the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, it seems appropriate to remember this old man called Lake.  The paper does not tell us his Christian name nor anything of the nature of his long service to the navy other than that he was an old tar but at least he was remembered then and, lo, he is remembered still!

Atwell's new alms-houses:  These fine buildings still exist in Exeter and were only 5 years old in 1845.  The Charity after which they are named dates back to the sixteenth century (1588) when a Mr. Lawrence Attwill or Atwill or Atwell, a wealthy London skinner left 320 acres of land to the city of his birth for charitable purposes.   The 'old' Atwell alms-houses were in Northernhay Street   There is a portrait of Lawrence at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.  

Lord Howe's victory: The Glorious First of June was fought , in fact, in 1794.  It was a rather inconsequential battle of the French Revolutionary Wars but  Admiral Lord Richard Howe (Black Dick!) was hailed as a victorious hero.  

Earl St. Vincent's battle:  Admiral John Jervis, (Old Oak!) fought the battle the Cape of St. Vincent from which he took his title.  It was a decisive battle which crippled the Spanish fleet.

The battle of Trafalgar:  Happy Anniversary!

THE TOUCH OF THE SHAKO, EXETER, 1845.

From The Western Times  of 18th October 1845:

"An awkward affair happened on Friday afternoon, on the verge which separates the military from the municipal power - at the very gate of the Barracks.  A young man, named Nevin, more rash than wise, purchased from ex-Sergeant Scott, keeper of the inn in Barrack-lane, a suit of cast off regimentals, to appear at the eighteenpenny fancy ball.

"In the pride of his trappings, he felt himself "every inch a soldier," and in he walked into the barracks, and accosted Adjutant Moore with a very correct salute.  But the quick eye of the officer saw his round shoulders and in-turned toes, and even the touch of the shako proved him a civil 'un;  so he took him into custody, as in duty bound, and was leading him off, when Nevin's friend, William Welshman, who had watched him go in, with no idea that "the lark" would prove so serious, interfered, and pushed by the officer  who thrust him into the road.

"Upon this, Welshman summoned Mr. Moore next morning before the magistrates, who, after hearing Mr. Sayer, a gentleman who was in company with the officer, and also a witness named Moore, on the part of Welshman, dismissed the complaint, cautioning Nevin to be more discreet in future."

The Barracks:  This must, I suggest,  refer to the  Exeter Higher Barracks:  (these days the housing estate called Horseguards) where the 1st King's Dragoon Guards were stationed at this time.  This is confusing when Barrack-lane is mentioned because there is now no such lane in Exeter and because Barrack Road, in Topsham once bore that name but the "shako" was the Dragoon's headwear, as alterative to the helmet, and the Dragoons, presumably, were in the Cavalry Barracks aka. the Higher Barracks.

The inn in Barrack-lane: This might be the earliest reference, not yet recognised,  to the inn which became The Retreat, an inn at the junction of Newell Road and Prison Lane.  As, perhaps, its first(?) landlord ex-Sergeant Scott deserves his place in Exeter's history.

The eighteenpenny fancy ball:  sounds fun!!

The touch of the shako: means Nevin's  'very correct' salute.  It was probably a disgrace,  not longest way up. shortest way down!,  and, I wager, was what gave him away  to Mr. Moore, the adjutant.

This silly story (hardly the Captain of Koepenick!) somewhat illustrates the nature of civil/military relations in mid-Victorian Exeter.  Young Mr. Nevin thought it proper to go to the ball in a contemporary uniform;  he thought it would be a lark to walk, did he march?, into the barracks;  his friend Welshman did not hesitate to challenge an officer on military ground and, when roughly handled, he was quick to take the adjutant to court; the city magistrates seem to have dismissed the behaviour of the complainant and his friend as  merely 'indiscreet'; there is no word of any apology to the military..

"THE FINGER OF ART," EXETER, 1845.

" WOOL"

"We cannot find language sufficiently full

To speak of the blessings afforded by "Wool""

Its benefits mighty, its wonderful worth

Are felt to the uttermost parts of the earth.

'Tis pleasing to view how the finger of art

Transforms this production at SOLOMON'S famed Mart:

Here the "Wool" which once coverered the back of the sheep

Is roll'd up and pil'd up in many a heap.

Give a call at this house, and behold what is done

With the produce of sheep by J.SOLOMON;

At SOLOMON'S famed warehouse, choice coats are displayed

In many a pattern and many a shade.

You'll find that the Show Rooms of SOLOMON are full

Of charming habiliments form'd out of "Wool;"

To heighten the blessings conferr'd by the sheep

J. SOLOMON & Co. make a rule to sell cheap.

Their purchase of "Wool" is at all times so large,

That they are able of course to diminish their charge;

Then pray do not wait for your purse to be full,

(For no one need find it a very hard pull,).

To purchase a garment of very choice "Wool.""

*

John Solomon was an ingenious outfitter.  He was a Jew and, during his time here, a generous supporter of the Exeter synagogue.  His Exeter premises extended from Waterbeer Street to the High Street.  He regularly advertised in bad verses.  I don't know who wrote them but I would like to think these particular verses were writtem by his 'shopman' whose name was Lamb!

The above is another example of Solomon's versifying which speaks for itself.  I am all for bad verses. I have written some.  I think more people should write bad verses;  they would lighten up what is becoming a Dark Age.  

John Solomon's candle gave a lovely light but lasted only a few years. He was a bankrupt at this time and his much puffed 'emporium' burned completely to the ground in 1847 and he and Mr. Lamb found themselves in the City Prison awaiting trial for arson.  I don't yet know the end of their story.

The prices of Mr. Solomon's woollen coats ranged between one guinea and four guineas.

Source:  The Western Times 11th October 1845.

"KNOCK HER DOWN!" EXETER, 1845.

"JAMES DENLEY was summoned for an assault on Robina Warren. 

"The parties had been drinking at Mrs. Knapman's in Rack-street, and a quarrel arose between Denley's brother and his wife, who is sister to the complainant.

"As Denley was encouraging his brother to "knock her down and serve her right," the complainant told him he had no right to interfere, upon which he struck her in the eye.

"On being asked if he admitted the charge, he said he had struck her, and he "thought it was his place to do it, because it was very hard a woman should be let to put out such expressions at her husband, and he never to touch her.  The magistrates, being of a different opinion, fined him 5s and expences."  

*

Men hitting women was a prevalent offence in 1845.   There is nothing special about this case except that James tells us quite clearly what was his motive.   James was out drinking with Mr. and Mrs. Denley  (his brother and his sister-in-law,) and with Robina Warren  (his sister-in-law's sister.)  He told his brother to knock his wife down for being cheeky.  Robina Warren told James he had no right to interfere. James thought it was his place to punch Robina in the eye and did so. 

Rack-street:  still exists and is between King St. and Preston St.  It was so named from the time when serge was being racked and stretched there.  There was a ragged school there.

Mrs. Knapman's was perhaps a kiddlywink.  There was no public house listed there in 1845.

Source: The Western Times,  4th October 1845.