Diary Dates 2010

Apart from outside visits, all meetings are held in the Music Room of the Central Library.
Start Times 7.30pm
Tea and coffee available

NOTE - the bi-monthly talk will be on the second Wednesday of the month from February 2010.

Wednesday 9th June 2010
Felicity Harper, the archivist of the Powderham Estate will give an illustrated talk on the Courtenay family.

Wednesday 11th August 2010
Sadru Bhanji will give a talk on 'The French Prisoner of War Hospital at Glasshouse, Countess Wear'

Wednesday 13th October 2010
Mr T Gray will talk on 'New Research in Exeter's History.'

See Coming Events for the summer outside meetings

In August 1954, an advertisement in the Express and Echo announced a "one day only" exhibition of Jonah the Giant Whale on Monday August the 9th in the Sidwell Street Car Park. A newspaper (western Morning News?) report mentions that Jonah was caught off Trondheim, Norway in September 1952. He was preserved by injection of formalin and was kept on a 90 foot lorry which was the longest in the country. Jonah measured 65 ft in length. Before coming to Britain he had toured several countries on the Continent.

I am almost certain that the car park used for this exhibition was on a bomb site at the top of Cheeke Street, opposite to where Somerfield/Co-op is now. There was another smaller site used as a car park further up Sidwell Street near the now demolished houses on the corner of Belmont Road and Sidwell Street ie before Western Way was built.

I was only young at the time of the exhibition and therefore my only memories are a vague idea where the exhibition was held, my amazement at the size of the whale and above all, the odd smell.

Jean Palin - the photo shows the whale on display somewhere in Europe

I had no idea what Oakum was until I read an article about Workhouses. It is a classic story of recycling a material from ships' rigging to ships' caulking. Almost certainly the making of Oakum would have been undertaken in the Exeter Workhouse once situated fronting Heavitee Road and now the site of Heavitree Hospital and possibly in Exeter Prison in t11e18th and 19th centuries.

From a workhouse glossary Oakum is described as "loose fibres obtained from unpicking old ropes which were then sold to the navy or shipbuilders". It was mixed with pine tar and used for caulking (sealing the lining) of timber built ships. Picking the rope apart was done without tools and must have been hard on the fingers.

Used rigging and other rope was sent to the poor houses and prisons and chopped into two foot lengths. Oakum was picked by untwisting the hemp rope until the rope we reduced to individual fibres. The hemp fibres were twisted back together and by rolling the fibres together a continuous oakum caulk strand was made. In some cases the fluffy fibres were sold for stuffing mattresses and pillows and making string . Hence the expression 'Money for old Rope'. The recycled material was then used to caulk (seal) the joints of the timber hulls and decking of ships.

The whole process was dirty and painful and was regarded as 'hard labour' in prison,s but often the alternatives of walking the treadmill or breaking up stone was equally unpleasant. In Exeter there was also a clay pit behind the workhouse. Which would you prefer?.

Geoffrey Harding

The first outside visit of the year, on a cold and wet May morning started at the Cathedral with a walk to 21 the Mint, via St Olave's Church. Our Redcoat guide was very knowledgeable, pointing out unusual features that many have walked past hundreds of time without noticing them – in Mint Lane there is a well in a garden that was never contaminated by cholera in 1832, saving many locals from the disease – or the site of Allhallows Church in Bartholomew Yard that was a parachute factory and after the war, a corset factory before demolition.

We finally reached the Catacombs and were regaled with tales of Victorian burial practises, including the Exeter law that everyone before 1815 had to have a woollen burial shroud to encourage the woollen trade – I wondered why I was always told to wear a vest as a child! When opened in August 1837, Bishop Philpotts would only consecrate the Anglican side of the cemetery and catacombs, reckoning that the unbelievers can look after themselves – he became so unpopular with Exeter's citizenry that they would throw rotten fruit at him when he passed in the street.

Tucked under the city wall, the catacombs were built to accommodate coffins in individual vaults on each side of a long, central passage. Although coffins were lowered from above to their resting place, a fine Egyptian façade was built along the front with entrances for the bereaved to enter to attend an interment. The coffin was slid into a brick lined vault while the officiating priest would conduct the service. Nearby, in a small, walled off area was a bricklayer who would wait for the end of the service, when he would then brick up the entrance. A brass plaque, or in some cases, a square stone with details of the deceased would be fixed to the bricks.

When first opened, the charge for interment was 20 guineas, a price which proved to be far too high. Most of the occupants were from outside of Devon, as wealthy local families preferred to bury their dead elsewhere. The price was dropped to 10 and then 7 guineas, which was not enough to prevent the catacombs from being a commercial disaster. Between 1837 and 1883, only 16 interments were made, all in the Anglican section. The City took over the venture using the Dissenters end of the passage as a temporary morgue for the unidentified bodies from the Theatre Royal fire in September 1887. The walls of that section were covered with lime wash after the bodies were buried in Higher Cemetery. During the Second War, the cold and dark passageways were used as bomb shelters.

Our guide told the story from a few years ago, of vandals that got into the catacombs, broke into one of the individual vaults, slid out the coffin and stole the skeleton. The police, through the Express and Echo announced that the remains were likely to be infected with cholera, an invention, as cholera raged through the city five years before the catacombs were opened. Two rather chastened and white faced young men turned up at Heavitree police station complete with their find, which was presumably hastily interred, while they were hastily interned.

The structure is dank and musty with the outside wall crumbling and weeds growing out of the stonework. Inside, at the apex of the vaulted arches, engineers have fixed small glass plates which are designed to break if the structure moves – they are all broken as the massive outer wall settles, although it is not known if the catacombs are in danger of collapse. When the Redcoat tours started around about 1990, they had an open day for the catacombs when 5,000 people turned up to see the interior, as many as Exeter City would get for a league match – one wonders which was the livelier.

The cemetery and catacombs had 17,552 interments before it was closed in 1949. Samuel Wesley, organist and composer was buried there in 1877, John Gendall, Exeter artist in 1865 and William Woodbridge, miller of Cricklepit in 1879.