St Pancras Church & Pancras Lane

The small church dedicated to St Pancras is a remarkable survival. Narrowly escaping demolition, it now stands within the 1970s' Guildhall Shopping Centre, stripped of all its historical context and "incongruously dished up on a platter of municipal planting in the middle of a paved square" (Pevsner and Cherry). The medieval street plan which surrounded the church until the mid-20th century suggested an ancient origin but this has unfortunately been swept away. The foundation itself though is ancient, as is much of the still-standing building, and it's possible that St Pancras church occupies the earliest site of Christian worship in Exeter. There has been some speculation that the church was founded by the Romano-British Christian citizens of Isca Dumnoniorum, the Roman town which evolved out of the Second Augustan Legion's fortress in the first century AD.

Christianity had been imported into the British Isles centuries before St Augustine founded the Diocese of Canterbury in 597. The church at Exeter's patron saint was probably St Pancras of Rome, a 14-year-old martyr who was allegedly killed on the orders of the Emperor Diocletian in Rome c304 AD and who was one of the first martyrs to be venerated by the early Christian church. Unfortunately, apart from some bits of Roman tessellated pavement excavated from around the church, there is little actual evidence to support the claim of a Roman foundation. The theory seems to rest on an early 19th century tradition that the Roman praetorium stood in the vicinity. Jenkins repeats the tradition in his 1806 history of the city and it had been repeated by numerous commentators ever since. The Roman pavements were probably installed in the corridors of private houses.

The church is referred to in 1191 but it's highly likely that the foundation is pre-Conquest in origin even if it doesn't date back to the Romans. There is some evidence that the remains of a Saxon doorway were found embedded in the south wall of the chancel during restoration in the 19th century. The Anglo-Saxons did have a number of churches in Exeter, including St George, St Martin, St Olave and a monastery in what is now the cathedral precinct. St Pancras was almost certainly another, very early foundation.

For over a thousand years the church stood on a narrow street called Pancras Lane. A detail from Hedgeland's early 19th century model of Exeter above right gives a good idea of the medieval layout of the church and surrounding street plan. It remained little altered from the Middle Ages until the middle of the 20th century. The church is highlighted in purple. The now-vanished buildings which fronted onto Pancras Lane are highlighted in red. The street had a very noticeable dog leg in it, even more exaggerated than a similar one formerly in Mary Arches Street. Quirks in an old street plan are always interesting. Maybe there was a Saxon enclosure around which the street was forced to make a detour, as is believed to have been the case at Mary Arches Street. Either way, the church probably predated Pancras Lane itself.

Pancras Lane connected Paul Street with Waterbeer Street. Another route off Pancras Lane was Trichay Street. Until 1349 it was possible to walk from Pancras Lane down Trichay Street and into North Street. Although blocked up in the 14th century by the rectory for St Kerrian's church, Trichay Street survived as a route until the 1970s. It's interesting to compare the image above left with the Hedgeland model. It shows a detail from the 1905 map of Exeter overlaid onto a modern aerial photograph of the Guildhall Shopping Centre. St Pancras church is highlighted again in purple. Pancras Lane is shown running past the church from Waterbeer Street and exiting into Paul Street at the top. The building plots highlighted in red have all disappeared since 1905. The photograph also shows the vast expanse of flat roofs and car parks of the Guildhall Shopping Centre which now covers much of this part of Exeter.

The photograph right © Exeter City Council shows a rare view looking down Pancras Lane towards Paul Street c1937. The photograph indicates that even in the 1930s the street still retained its built-up character with properties lining both sides of the narrow thoroughfare. The buildings might've been different but this had been the character of the street since the Middle Ages. The covered passageway visible to the left of the car led into Arthur's Buildings, a courtyard with properties on either side.

Most of the buildings on Pancras Lane were deliberately removed between c1937 and 1951 as part of the city's council's planned redevelopment of the area behind the Higher Market. This left most of the ancient street as little more than a large car park. The alignment of the street had already been altered when the police station on Waterbeer Street was constructed in 1887. The new police station also resulted in the demolition of several houses to the north-east of the church which, until then, had been "hidden from public view by the gradual accumulation of squalid tenements around it". The area was left unscathed by the Exeter Blitz but the church was threatened with demolition in the 1960s. Fortunately it was spared, and although the surroundings are now bland and mediocre the church itself is of genuine interest.

The plan is very simple, consisting of just a nave and a chancel with no aisles or porches or towers. The layout and the extremely small dimensions have been compared with the Anglo-Saxon church at Escomb in County Durham. Although the oldest parts of St Pancras date to the 13th century, the ground plan could well have remained unchanged since Saxon times. The walls have been patched over the centuries and the church today is largely constructed from blocks of purple volcanic trap with scattered blocks of sandstone, red Heavitree breccia and white-veined volcanic trap from Pocombe. This gives the church a quite different appearance to most of Exeter's surviving parish churches, many of which were rebuilt in the 15th century from red Heavitree breccia with dressed sandstone around the windows and doorways.

A number of descriptions of the church state that it's built from friable red Heavitree breccia but close examination of the walls show that this is clearly untrue. It seems likely that the church was rebuilt or overhauled in the 13th century. A two-light lancet window with Y tracery above left and a one-light lancet window, both in the north wall of the chancel, date to the 1200s. A three-light (restored) east window, also with distinctive Y tracery, is of a similar date. The insides of the chancel windows have round-headed rere-arches. These are some of the oldest surviving windows in any of Exeter's parish churches.

The three windows in the nave are of the mullion type and were probably installed in the 16th century although the nave itself also dates to the 1200s. The exterior of the west wall has a relieving arch embedded in it made of purple volcanic trap. I wonder if there was once a western bell tower here with an internal opening into the nave.

The 1587 Braun and Hogenburg map of Exeter shows St Pancras church. No tower is visible but there are two windows set into the west wall so perhaps the relieving arch took a single large window.

Inside the chancel is a piscina right, used for washing the communion vessels. It has a three-foiled cusped arch and also dates to the 13th century. It features a shallow bowl carved in the shape of a quatrefoil. Above it is a strange little niche. Cresswell believed it might've been an aumbry, used for storing chalices and other vessels, but it does seem a bit small. Maybe it was used to hold a small reliquary or the sacramental bread. The oldest visible feature in the church today is the 12th century circular font with a band of bead moulding around the top below left. According to Cresswell, the font was damaged by over-zealous restorers in 1831 who "scraped it until all traces of antiquity were well nigh scraped away". Compared with other Norman fonts in Devon, such as the superb example at Stoke Canon near Exeter, it does seem rather plain but it is also perhaps the oldest font in the city. (A more elaborately carved Norman font also survives at the church of St Mary Steps.) There's no reason to doubt that the font has been on the same site since the 12th century.

In 1658, during Cromwell's Commonwealth, the church was sold to its parishioners for £50. The parish register for St Pancras also records an earthquake which shook all the houses in Exeter on 19 July 1727: "It was felt all over England, and in some places beyond the sea". Jenkins described the church in 1806, stating that it "bears evident marks of great antiquity" and adding that "it is a very small and plain building, forty-six six inches in length, and sixteen feet in breadth.

The interior is dark and gloomy, consisting of a Nave and Chancel, the latter only is seated; the pulpit and font are very old. As no use is now made of this Church, excepting as a Cemetery for a few families, it is consequently very much neglected, and may soon be desecrated". The church wasn't desecrated but was partially restored in the 1830s. The church reopened in 1830 "having been disused for a number of years". The 'Exeter Flying Post' believed it hadn't been used "either wholly or partially since the execution of "Archbishop Laud"! Certainly untrue, but it does appear that the church was badly neglected throughout much of the 18th century. A 19th century sketch shows the church with a gaping hole in the chancel roof and smashed glass in the 13th century windows.

The roof of the nave right, although restored, dates to the 15th century. It has a barrel vault, a type also found at St Mary Steps, St Mary Arches (roof destroyed in 1942), St Lawrence (destroyed in 1942), St Olave (sadly hidden beneath a later roof), at St Martin and at Tucker's Hall in Fore Street (probably the finest of all).

The entire roof structure is now visible at St Pancras but in the 15th century the spaces between the ribs would've been covered in plaster. I've recreated the effect of the plaster panels to give a better idea of the roof's medieval appearance. Carved wooden bosses, once brightly painted, cover the points where the ribs meet. The church received a major restoration between 1887 and 1889, having been closed again for 12 years.

The work was carried out under the supervision of John Pearson, the Gothic Revival architect of Truro Cathedral and the partially reconstructed cloisters at Exeter Cathedral. For once, the Victorian 'restoration' was relatively sympathetic and didn't involve the complete reconstruction of the entire building. The chancel was in a particularly advanced state of decay and was rebuilt stone for stone, reincorporating much of the original fabric and all of the surviving 13th century features, such as the windows and the piscina (although unfortunately not the remains of the Saxon doorway). The chancel roof was rotten, having been left open to the elements for part of the 19th century, and so Pearson replaced it entirely with a wagon roof similar to the surviving 15th century roof in the nave.

The stonework of the 13th century east window was consolidated. Pearson believed that the east window was an insertion added into a pre-existing wall. Three carved fragments with Romanesque decoration were discovered in the walls of the chancel. These have now been inserted into the south wall of the chancel but they are so badly damaged that it's difficult to see them as anything more than ragged bits of stone. They appear to have been part of a corbel table, but whether they were originally belonged to the church itself or were recycled from another building in the city is unknown.

The photograph left shows the view inside the church looking east towards the chancel. It's clear to see how the apex of the nave roof and the apex of the chancel roof don't line up. Both parts of the church are built on a slightly different alignment suggesting two distinct phases of construction. The pulpit, just visible to the left, dates to c1600 and came from the church of Allhallows on Goldsmith Street when it was demolished in 1906. Pearson's one major error was in building a new chancel arch resting on corbels and using Bath stone, a material completely at odds with the rest of the church. Pevsner and Cherry called it "unsympathetic", and so it is. The arch had already been replaced with brick in the 1830s. Following Pearson's restoration, the church reopened on 02 June 1889. The lesson was read by the Archdeacon of Exeter and the Bishop of Exeter preached the sermon.

The church contains a few other interesting features. Pearson's work involved stripping all of the plaster from the walls. This action uncovered the arched doorway of the rood stair right, probably added in the 14th century. Built into the thickness of the wall was a stone staircase leading via an internal doorway at first-floor level to the rood loft above the rood screen (the screen, separating the nave from the chancel, was apparently removed c1800).

A few of these steps still remain in situ and the blocked up doorway of the rood loft can be seen as a scar high up on the north wall. The rood loft provided access to the top of the screen so that the great rood, an effigy of the crucified Christ, could be cleaned or decorated, or so that candles could be lit. The church had a number of floor slabs, the earliest of which dated to 1669 and commemorated the burial of Benjamin Board, one of the city's merchants. Unfortunately these slabs are now presumably covered by the modern flooring. The few wall memorials all came from Allhallows on Goldsmith Street. One of them records the death of Loveday, the daughter of Christopher Bellett. She died of smallpox in 1711. Four of her sisters died from the same illness in February and March 1717.

The photograph left shows the interior of the church looking towards the west wall. The church also has a single medieval bell hanging in a bell turret above the western wall. It was cast during the 15th century by the Exeter bellfounder, Robert Norton. It is inscribed, in Latin, with the motto: "I may be small but I am heard over a great distance". I've lived in Exeter for nearly 40 years and I've never heard it ring once.

The other particularly lovely addition is the fine late 19th century stained glass inserted into the east window below. It shows St Pancras of Rome, with Christ in the centre and St Boniface to the right. St Boniface is believed to have studied at a Saxon monastery in Exeter and the site of the monastery was thought to be close to St Pancras' church. (In reality the site of the monastery is almost certainly near the west front of the cathedral. The remains of the Saxon minster there were only excavated in the early 1970s.) The stained glass in the east window was the gift of Bishop Tozer, the first Bishop of Zanzibar. Beautifully executed, I don't think it would look out of place in one of the side chapels of the cathedral.

St Pancras church is well worth visiting for anyone who is in Exeter and hasn't yet been inside. As Hugh Meller says in his book 'Exeter Architecture': "St Pancras has survived. Miraculously it retains an atmosphere of tranquillity which most other central Exeter parish churches have lost and it serves as a constant reproach against the arid post-war development in Exeter represented by the Precinct that surrounds it".

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A Brief History of Waterbeer Street

Waterbeer Street, left c1905, is one of the oldest streets in Exeter. It runs parallel with the High Street, joining North Street to what was once Goldsmith Street. There is evidence that it formed part of the Roman civitas, possibly dating to the very early years of the town's formation between c70AD and 80AD. A large number of Roman finds, especially coins, have been unearthed in the street over the last two hundred years as well as several large fragments of tessellated pavements.

The modern name of the street is mentioned as early as 1253 when it appears on a deed as 'Waterberestrete' and again in 1327 as 'Waterber Strete'. According to most commentators the name is occupational, like Goldsmith Street, Preston Street, Smythen Street and Milk Street, and probably means 'the street of the water bearers'. Clean water was a valuable commodity in the Middle Ages and many people would've relied upon water sourced from wells and springs within the city walls. Fresh water wasn't piped into the city through the underground passages until c1200, and even then it was initially only for the use of the cathedral clergy and, from 1226, the monks at St Nicholas's Priory.

For citizens without access to a private well the water sellers would've walked the streets of Exeter selling water from jugs carried on their back. If they congregated or lived in Waterbeer Street then that would explain the origins of the name. An alternative theory was suggested by Robert Dymond at the end of the 19th century. Dymond thought the name could refer to the ecclesiastical office of the 'bearer of Holy Water' although I think this is far-fetched. The image right shows part of the 1587 Braun and Hogenburg map of Exeter. The houses on Waterbeer Street are highlighted in red.

Exeter's first purpose-built theatre opened on Waterbeer Street on 30 December 1734, although plays had been performed in the city since the Middle Ages (e.g. the mayor and chamber are known to have attended a play at the Dominican Friary near Bedford Street in 1409.) The new theatre is named on Donn's 1765 map of Exeter and appears to have been set back from the street and accessed through a passageway between properties on Waterbeer Street itself. It was located on the same site as the big flower bed now opposite the back of the Guildhall.

Baring-Gould tells a story that following a visit to the city by the Methodist preacher, John Wesley, in 1743 "the local comedians were prosecuted as vagrants and forced to give up their theatre in Waterbeer Street". The temporary closure of the theatre was probably the result of issues relating to the Licensing Act of 1737. Either way, the Methodists appear to have rented the building temporarily, using it as a chapel until the actors resumed occupation. The theatre continued in use until 1787. The presence of the theatre led to Waterbeer Street being called Theatre Lane until the theatre closed, at which point the street reverted back to its old name.

The image left shows a detail from Caleb Hedgeland's early 19th century model of Exeter now in the city museum. All of the houses which fronted onto Waterbeer Street are highlighted in red. St Kerrian's church on North Street, rendered and whitewashed and with a little bell turret on the roof, is visible at the bottom. The bulk of the Guildhall is visible at the top, the rear part of the hall set back from Waterbeer Street itself.

One particularly intriguing building is described by Jenkins in 1806: "In Waterbeer-street...lately stood a very ancient building; it originally consisted of three semicircular arches, supporting an angular front, with an arched window in the centre: those arches or gateways led into a spacious hall, which (according to tradition) was the Praetorium or town-hall; while some respectable antiquarians judge it to be the remains of a religious edifice". The praetorium was a sort of governor's house found in cities and towns across the Roman Empire which could also function as a court house. The building on Waterbeer Street was also believed to be the architectural forerunner of Exeter's Guildhall, which has been on the High Street since at least 1160. It was probably neither the Saxon/early-Norman Guildhall or the Romans' Praetorium so what exactly was it?

Two depictions of this building survive. One was drawn by Jenkins himself and shows the southern gable end, above right. The other appears on Hedgeland's model left, shown as a hall-like structure with two arched windows in the north wall. Jenkins dismissed the idea of the structure being a church as there were "no remains of a vaulted roof" or any of those "grotesque embellishments so common in the religious edifices of our Saxon ancestors". According to Jenkins, the 18th century antiquarian Andrew Ducarel supported the theory that the building had a religious function and was "the first stone building erected in this city". This was also almost certainly incorrect too. The building was demolished in 1803, being "of a very ruinous state", and replaced with Kingdon's iron foundry. (Later known as Garton & King, foundry buildings of some sort remained on the site until they were demolished in 1963.)

Some parts of the building were exposed during the demolition. Jenkins recorded that "the back part appeared to be designed for a prison, under which were strong stone walls, surrounding a square vault, (in which were a privy and sewer) probably a dungeon." Several Roman coins were discovered and a silver groat from the reign of Henry VIII. Unfortunately nothing else is known about the building. It was presumably genuinely ancient and the round arches mentioned by Jenkins could've placed the building in the 11th or 12th centuries. It's true date and function will probably remain a mystery. Jenkins also describes "a large ancient roomy house", which was attached to the mystery building, and which was used as a boys' charity school.

Much of the north side of the street was widened between 1876 and 1905 resulting in the loss of most the older properties on that side. One major late Victorian development was the construction of a new police headquarters complete with cells and courts left. In 1887 houses on Waterbeer Street and in Pancras Lane were demolished to provide a site for the new buildings. The police station was sited almost opposite the rear entrance of the Guildhall, the same location occupied by the theatre 150 years earlier. As the foundations were being dug three large fragments of tessellated pavement decorted with a geometric design were unearthed about 2ft below the surface level. The fragments were lifted and relaid in the foyer of the police station along with a plan showing where they had been found.

Aileen Fox thought that this pavement was the same one recorded by the antiquarian William Stukeley in 1723, described by him as "a great Roman pavement of little white square stones". The pavement was probably a corridor mosaic installed in the private house of a Roman citizen. The new police station was an attractive structure in its own right. Constructed from red brick with dressed stone windows and door surrounds, its most distinctive feature was a large turret with a tall conical tile-hung roof which projected out from the corner of the building at the junction between Waterbeer Street and Pancras Lane. The turret had three tall traceried windows with a series of quatrefoils running beneath the roof line. The building cost £5000. Peter Thursby's 1977 bronze sculpture 'Looking Forward' right marks the site of the police station today.

Until the post-war period the south side of the street still contained an almost unbroken line of historically interesting buildings, most of which were timber-framed and dated to c1700 or earlier. Those which survive include: No. 14, now the Devon Camera Centre. Dating to the 17th century it has a hipped gable roof and a 19th century shop front. Nos. 15 and 16 is a three storey red-brick warehouse from c1800. Next to this is the rear of the Guildhall. This part of the Guildhall dates to 1838 and was built as a replacement for two cells used as a female prison since 1558. On the first floor is a jury room lined with 17th century panelling taken from St Katherine's Priory at Polsloe. Adajcent to the back of the Guildhall is what was formerly the rear of the Turk's Head on the High Street. Then there are Nos. 17a, 18 and 19. Each has a gable of a different size and it's likely that the core of these buildings are much older than the facades suggest. All of the buildings are Grade II listed and are shown in the photograph below.

The street's late 19th century appearance remained little changed until the post-war period. This part of the city, including most of North Street, Waterbeer Street, Pancras Lane, Goldsmith Street, Queen Street and Paul Street survived the Exeter Blitz of 1942 completely unscathed. The Waterbeer Street police headquarters closed in 1959 when the city police moved to new premises in Heavitree. (The new police building was on the site of William Hooper's Higher Summerlands, a row of 11 large red-brick townhouses from c1804. All but one of these fine houses was damaged or destroyed in 1942 and the sole survivor was demolished in the 1950s). The police station and court rooms in Waterbeer Street was demolished soon afterwards. The Roman tessellated pavement in the foyer was lifted again and transferred to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum where it was erroneously identified as a fake by one of the curators and subsequently destroyed.

As mentioned above, the foundry was demolished in 1963 and between 1972 and 1976, many of the remaining buildings on Waterbeer Street was bulldozed to create the Guildhall Shopping Centre.

The image right shows a detail from the 1905 map of Exeter overlaid onto a modern aerial view of the same area. Nearly all of the plots highlighted in red were demolished between 1960 and 1976 and none of them survive today leaving just a quarter of the pre-war street intact. All of the standing buildings on the north side, most of which were Victorian, were demolished and over half of the south side was also demolished.

This included the loss of at least four buildings of some antiquity. No. 21 Waterbeer Street was a Grade II listed property built on four floors. Cased in brick it was of timber-framed construction and probably dated to c1700 or earlier. The south end of the building fronted onto the High Street as No. 198 High Street. No. 21 Waterbeer Street was granted listed status in 1974 but was demolished soon after.

To the right of No. 21 was No. 22 Waterbeer Street. It too was timber-framed with a hipped gable roof and also dated to c1700 or earlier. This formed part of No. 197 High Street. The Ordnance Survey map of 1951 shows that both No. 197 and No. 198 were two long medieval burgage plots probably created in the 15th century by the subdivision of a larger single tenement plot. Hoskins wrote about these two properties in his 1960 book 'Two Thousand Years in Exeter'. They were both part of a quirk in the parish boundary line of St Martin's church which saw the parish boundary leap across the High Street to include Nos. 197 and 198 High Street. According to Hoskins, the tenement plots of Nos. 197 and 198 High Street, "both of which extend back into Waterbeer Street" and which were "two adjoining properties", had been "in St Martin's parish for nearly 750 years". Like its neighbour at No. 21, No. 22 Waterbeer Street was demolished.

No. 23 Waterbeer Street was also built on four floors with a slate gable roof. It had a stucco facade inset into which were Georgian sash windows. It too dated to c1700 or earlier and was associated with the same burgage plot on which stood the remnants of the late 16th century townhouse at No. 196 High Street. No. 196 High Street was demolished, along with Nos. 21, 22 and 23 Waterbeer Street partly to create a pedestrianised entrance into the shopping precinct from the High Street. The building at the back of No 195 High Street which also contained 16th century elements was demolished at the same time.

The photograph above shows the north side of Waterbeer Street today. The police station stood to the far right of the image, beyond the end of the red brick wall. Another building razed to the ground c1974 was No. 20 Waterbeer Street, an attractive two storey brick-faced property with a stone string course dating to c1800, possibly hiding an older core. Snell's Buildings, a small terrace of 10 little houses at a right angle to Waterbeer Street and accessed through a covered passageway were also destroyed. The former New Market Inn on the corner of Goldsmith Street and Waterbeer Street dating to c1800 or earlier was another casualty, along with nearly every building on Goldsmith Street itself.

Bizarrely, these buildings were all destroyed without any archaeological record being made so it's now almost impossible to say exactly what was lost. Only 25% of the Waterbeer Street buildings shown on the 1951 Ordnance Survey map of Exeter still survive today. The photograph right shows the view into Waterbeer Street from its junction with North Street.

It's an ugly story, particularly in light of the destruction already wrought on other parts of the city by the slum clearances and the 1942 air-raid. Even uglier was the red-brick expanse of the shopping centre which took the place of the demolished buildings. In the words of Pevsner and Cherry, the precinct is "a crushing disappointment" full of "banal commercial building" in which the surviving medieval church of St Pancras makes "a pathetic and inappropriate centrepiece" now "deprived of its homely and historic setting of small streets". But compared with the shopping centre's impact on North Street and Paul Street, described as both "disastrous" and "catastrophic", the area around St Pancras church and in Waterbeer Street seems positively Arcadian.

There is little reminder today that Waterbeer Street was even once a separate street in its own right. The impression now is of a small group of surviving historical properties staring out onto an open public space tacked onto which is a pedestrian passageway with completely modern commercial structures on either side. The city council's own 2002 conservation report included the rebuilt Nos. 21, 22 and 23 Waterbeer Street and the whole of the Guildhall Shopping Centre as some of the buildings which "make a negative contribution" to the area but nearly 40 years later and the entire precinct now seems relatively subtle in comparison to the overbearing redevelopment of Princesshay.

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Nos. 2, 3 & 4, Cathedral Close

These three properties sit on part of the footprint of the College of the Annuellars. The College, built as a residence for the cathedral's chantry priests, was founded in the 1520s. It was disbanded just two decades later following Edward VI's Chantries Act of 1547. The College buildings appear to have been swiftly subdivided into separate tenements and these are now represented by the plots of Nos. 1 to 5 Cathedral Close.

Nos 2 to 4 are bounded at one end by the well-known 'Mol's Coffee House' and at the other end by No. 5 Cathedral Close which still retains parts of the College's east range and refectory. All three houses date to the late 16th century, after the disbanding of the Annuellars' College in the 1540s, and all three are built of timber-framing. It's possible that fragments of the College remain within the fabric of the later construction but it must be assumed that the sites were largely rebuilt following the College's demise. According to Hugh Meller, "not one of the interiors remains unscathed".

No. 2 (on the far left in the photograph) is Grade II* listed. It has two oriel windows on the first floor with another on the second floor. The second floor oriel window currently in the facade isn't the original. Until 1970 the aperture was filled with a Georgian sash window. The shop front on the ground floor was probably altered at the same time. For many years it was 'Hanson's' tea room but it is now the premises of 'Tea on the Green'. I'm not aware of any historical features that might remain inside. No. 3, in the centre of the photograph, is also Grade II* listed. It is of a similar date to No. 2 but the facade was replaced c1800 giving the building its current Georgian appearance. An egg and dart cornice runs along the top of the facade. Again I've no idea if any internal features of interest survive. No. 4 has a rusticated stucco facade which is now almost invisible beneath numerous coats of white paint. The frontage looks as though it was added c1700. Apparently there are a few features surviving internally including some restored late 16th century panelling. Like the other two properties, No. 4 is Grade II* listed.

All three buildings came close to destruction during the Exeter Blitz. The photograph below, taken from one of the towers of the cathedral, shows the properties within the context of the Cathedral Close with the reconstructed areas of the city stretching away to the north and east.

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No. 5 Cathedral Close and the Annuellars' College

No. 5 Cathedral Close sits within the boundaries of the cathedral precinct, facing out across the picturesque green and towards the north tower of the cathedral. One of only 22 Grade I listed buildings in Exeter, No 5 is everything you would hope to find in an old cathedral city. This is history as architecture. The beautiful brick facade exudes quiet confidence from every beautifully mortared joint but the property has ecclesiastical connections which extend back to before the Reformation.

Like so many of Exeter's most interesting surviving historical buildings, No. 5 Cathedral Close retains some significant late medieval fragments. During the Middle Ages, if you were particularly rich, you could leave money for a priest to perform a mass on the anniversary of your death. This mass was called a 'missae annuellaria'. At Exeter these priests were called annuellars (or annivallars), their name derived from the same root as 'anniversary' and 'annual'. They were in effect chantry priests. Exeter Cathedral had a number of chantry chapels, purpose-built shrines financed through the endowment of land and property by wealthy donors, where a chantry priest could perform the anniversary mass before a dedicated altar. The Oldham Chantry below right, endowed by Bishop Oldham and constructed c1519, is particularly fine.

The Annuellars were active in Exeter at least by the end of the 13th century and by 1337 there were twenty one annuellar priests connected to the cathedral. Until the early 16th century it appears that the Annuellars lodged in various houses and rooms scattered across the Cathedral Close. Their ecclesiastical colleagues, the Vicars Choral, had resided together in a purpose-built complex of buildings on the other side of the Close since the end of the 14th century. Consisting of two rows of small houses, a gatehouse, kitchen and refectory hall, this complex was known as the College of the Vicars Choral. No such arrangement was made for the Annuellars. According to Stanford Lehmberg, "there had been talk of providing a home for the annuellars of Exeter as early as the 1380s" (the same decade in which the College of the Vicars Choral was founded). Nothing seems to have come of these plans and the Annuellars continued to live independently of each other until the first quarter of the 16th century.

Lega-Weekes cites a pre-Reformation document from c1525 which refers to "the mansion place latly buylded for the Annylers". This "mansion place" was the College of the Annuellars. Clearly the decision had been made to create a collegiate residence for Exeter's chantry priests where they could eat and live together in one location. The Annuellars' College was probably founded in 1528. It was to prove very short-lived. Regarded as overtly Popish, the chantries across England were abolished in 1547 by the Protestant King Edward VI. With no chantries there was no need for the chantry priests and so, just two decades after it had been founded, the College of the Annuellars was disbanded, the twenty-one annuellar priests pensioned off a year later in 1548.

The photograph right was taken from the north tower of the cathedral and shows the brick facade of No. 5 with the medieval ranges at the back. The bomb-damaged chapel of St Catherine can be seen in the top right corner illustrating just how close No. 5 came to destruction in 1942.

Until recently it was widely believed that the Annuellars' College extended from the north-west corner of the Cathedral Close as far as St Catherine's Almshouses. The substantial remnants of the canonry on Catherine Street were also believed to have been subsumed into the college buildings. Writing in 1821, the historian George Oliver claimed that "behind Moll's Coffee-house, are considerable remains of the college of the annivellars, or annuellars, or chantry priests". He then goes on to describe an arched doorway in the front wall of what was then the Country House Inn, formerly part of the extensive medieval canonry. The 1876 Ordnance Survey map of the city labels the canonry complex on Catherine Street as the "College of Chantry Priests". It is now thought that the College of the Annuellars and the canonry on Catherine Street remained two totally separate entities.

It goes without saying that precise details of the College remain frustratingly elusive. Unlike the College of the Vicars Choral which survived largely intact until its almost total demolition between 1850 and 1893, the College of the Annuellars was quickly divided up and converted into separate tenements which were then subsequently altered or rebuilt.

A lease of c1549 to Richard Weston refers to "the annuellars' house in the Close, whereyn divers chantry-priests now or late did inhabit or dwell together" and another of 1585 mentions "the tenement sometimes called the Annuellars' House, in the Close, together with all edifices, buildings, courtlages, and gardens belonging unto or reputed parts of the same".

Much of the Annuellars' College has vanished beneath later alterations but one of the reasons that No. 5 Cathedral Close was awarded Grade I listed status in 1953 was because it retains a large remnant of the old College buildings. It is a property of two halves. The front part top, visible from the Cathedral Close, has a brick facade of c1700. A date of 1688 on the rainwater head is believed to commemorate the construction making it coeval with other early brick structures in the city, such as the Custom House, the Notaries' House, No. 40 High Street and the now destroyed Paragon House near South Street. The facade is two storeys high with attic windows almost hidden behind a parapet, beneath which runs a modillion cornice. Each window is surrounded with a moulded architrave.

There is no front entrance. Access into the property is through a covered passageway above right. In two of the late 17th century rooms are contemporary panelling as well as a staircase. The back wall of the 17th century range is constructed of stone and almost certainly belonged to the Annuellars' College.

The covered passageway exits into a small courtyard, enclosed on three sides left. From here it's possible to see a large L-shaped building constructed of rough Heavitree breccia attached to the rear of the property. The northern range (with the late medieval arched doorway) is believed to be the College's dining hall from c1528. Although now divided horizontally into two separate floors, it retains a barrel-vaulted ceiling constructed from moulded timber ribs. The room below has a 15th century oak screen, imported from elsewhere, as well as a stone fireplace featuring angel corbels. The east range is also associated with the early 16th century College of the Annuellars.

A reconstruction of the College by Piran Bishop, formerly of Exeter Archaeology, suggests that the residence was built around a quadrangle. The documents mentioned above also imply that the "mansion place" was built as a unified project rather than cobbled together out of pre-existing houses. On Piran Bishop's reconstruction the entrance into the quadrangle in the 16th century is shown as being in the same place as the existing covered passageway at No. 5.

The former site of the Annuellars' College is shown on the the aerial view right. The late 17th century range of No. 5 is highlighted in purple. The standing remains of the College are highlighted in green. Based on Bishop's reconstruction, I've highlighted the possible 16th century extent of the College in red. It's easy to see how the remaining fragments once formed part of four ranges surrounding a central quadrangle. The peculiar alignment of St Martin's church, founded in 1065, makes it difficult to know how the College might've abutted up to it so I've just guessed. According to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, "a recent archaeological survey has shown that much of the college remains, embedded in later housing". This later housing would include the current sites of Mol's Coffee House, Nos. 2 to 4 Cathedral Close as well as No. 5, all of which occupy the footprint of the college. The photograph below shows Nos. 1 to 5 Cathedral Close today.

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The Subdeanery: No. 6 Cathedral Close

The former Subdeanery is part of a small group of picturesque and important buildings in Exeter's Cathedral Close. It's located at No. 6, sandwiched between part of the Annuellars' College at No. 5 and the Devon and Exeter Institution at No. 7. Most of the buildings now on the northern side of the Close have medieval origins, including the former Subdeanery.

The position of the subdean of Exeter Cathedral was created in 1284 by Bishop Peter Quinil. According to Oliver, the first subdean was William de Bisiman who was installed on 07 July of that year and Lega-Weekes claimed that the subdean's residence has been on this site since at least 1458. Francis Godwin, later a Bishop of Hereford, was made the subdean in 1587. Godwin wrote 'The Man in the Moone'. Published anonymously in 1638, it is regarded as the first story involving space travel to be written in the English language.

From the outside at least the Subdeanery appears to date from the 18th century. It is five bays wide with a central doorway framed by a porch resting on Roman Doric columns. A modillion cornice runs across the width of the building above which can be seen three little dormer windows let into the roof. Hugh Meller says that "the date on the downpipe is 1696" but the two rainwater heads are usually covered by the vine which scrambles across the facade. Pevsner and Cherry state that the building was subject to alterations between 1770 and 1772 which is probably when the porch was added. Writing in 1915, Lega-Weekes described "medieval fabric" which survived "internally and at the rear" although I don't know the extent of these survivals.

One very interesting feature which can be seen from the outside is a large blocked medieval archway above right. Located on the right side of the facade it's similar in style to a blocked arch in the garden wall at the nearby Chancellor's House. The arch at the Subdeanery is built of blocks of moulded purple volcanic trap. Some of the moulding is still visible as are some of the relieving blocks of Heavitree breccia above. The arch is a remarkable remnant of the medieval Subdeanery. It probably dates to the 15th century and a covered passageway must've once led through into a courtyard or stables at the rear of the property.

From what I can gather the archway remained open until 1807. At this date the size of the Subdeanery was increased through the appropriation of part of the house next door at No. 7 Cathedral Close (now the Devon and Exeter Institution and a former townhouse of the Earls of Devonshire). Several rooms at No. 7, including a brewhouse and kitchen, were subsumed into the boundaries of No. 6 and subsequently demolished.

The archway was blocked up and the passageway was incorporated into living area within the house itself. The window opening which can be seen today was added at this time. Access was still needed to the rear of the property and so a second archway was created in part of the facade of No. 7. The rest of the windows were probably replaced at the same time (the pattern of unequal panes of glass is a particularly nice feature). Much of the front wall is probably medieval in origin. It is constructed from Heavitree breccia with much sandstone and a few blocks of purple volcanic trap.

One curiosity is the fact that some of the sandstone blocks seem to be inscribed with heavily-weathered decoration deeply scored into the surface. This can really only be seen during the winter and when the sun casts a shadow across the facade. Perhaps the front was once rendered and the stones scored to create a key for the render. A more exciting possibility is that they were reused from another building. It's likely that more of the medieval Subdeanery survives within the rest of the building although I don't know anything about the interior or the original medieval layout.

No longer used as the subdean's residence, the structure was granted Grade II* listed status in 1953. The photograph below shows the very attractive front of the building. The replacement archway of 1807 which led to the rear of the property can be seen set into the facade of No. 7 Cathedral Close to the far right.

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The John Coombe Fireplace, formerly in The Chantry

The John Coombe fireplace, shown left © Exeter Archaeology, is widely regarded one of Exeter's most important surviving medieval artifacts. It now languishes in the store room at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Queen Street, detached from the building for which it was created.

It's worth stating from the start that the fireplace is also one of the city's most enigmatic objects. A recent discovery in the archives of the Royal Academy in London has solved one of its mysteries but the discovery has inadvertently created many more.

The object of this post will be to give a short account of the known facts about the fireplace before discussing some of many unanswered questions which surrounded it. Along with the dean, treasurer and chancellor, the precentor was one of the cathedral's four senior ecclesiastical positions. As the lead chanter, the precentor was responsible for music and liturgy and, at Exeter at least, he was also acting president of the chapter in the dean's absence. The precentor had his own residence within the Cathedral Precinct. Located close to the Bishop's Palace in Palace Gate, it was known as the Chantry and the precentor at the close of the 15th century was John Coombe.

It is believed that between 1496 and 1499 John Coombe commissioned a fireplace to be installed in the great hall of the Chantry. It wasn't without precendent. Elaborate fireplaces were installed within a number of Exeter's ecclesiasical residences in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. There was one in the refectory hall of the College of the Vicars Choral, at least four at the Deanery (some of which survive as fragments), one in the hall of the Annuellars in the Cathedral Close, one at the Archdeacon of Exeter's house in Palace Gate, another at the Chancellor's House and, most spectacularly of all, a huge fireplace in the Bishop's Palace.

The Courtenay fireplace at the Bishop's Palace above right is one of the most extravagant things of its kind. It was commissioned by Bishop Peter Courtenay in c1486. Described by Pevsner and Cherry as "exceedingly ostentatious", its impact was such that Bishop Courtenay's example seems to have served as a model for Precentor Coombe's own fireplace.

The Courtenay fireplace, originally positioned in the west wing of the Bishop's Palace, is studded with brightly painted heraldic shields, a number of which depict the Courtenay coat of arms. Another feature are the initials 'PC' and the letter 'T', believed to stand for 'Tau', the badge of the Hospital of St Anthony in London of which Bishop Courtenay was the Master. Perhaps most striking of all is the huge, ornately decorated ogee-headed canopy with rose-bush finials at either side. At the apex of the canopy, 12ft above the ground, is a large depiction of the Royal arms with the greyhound supporters associated with Henry VII. It is an extraordinary creation and must've been marvelled at by every member of the clergy who saw it.

A close copy of the Courtenay fireplace was installed in the dining room of Powderham Castle, the seat of the Earls of Devon, in the 19th century left. The heraldic details are quite different, as are the finials, but it gives a good idea of the scale and splendour of Peter Courtenay's medieval original at the Bishop's Palace in Exeter (which isn't open to the public).

It's almost certain that all of the lavish medieval fireplaces installed in Exeter were the work of local masons, probably those already being employed to work on the cathedral. The John Coombe fireplace in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum is largely made from the creamy-grey limestone quarried from Beer in East Devon.

As it exists today, the John Coombe fireplace has two side panels of blind Gothic arches with trefoil heads. At the top of each panel are the beautifully wrought initials of John Coombe himself. The way in which the 'J' and the 'C' intertwine and overlap with each other in Gothic lettering set against a quatrefoil background is particularly lovely, shown below right © Royal Albert Memorial Museum. A similar effect in the same position was a feature of the large stone fireplace installed at the hall of the Vicars Choral c1519. There the initials were 'JR' and 'T' for 'John Ryse, Treasurer'. Unfortunately that magnificent example was almost completely destroyed during the Exeter Blitz of 1942.)

Spanning the two side panels of the John Coombe fireplace is the lintel. It is intricately carved with a star-shaped lattice pattern. There are two heraldic shields on the lintel: the left shield depicts the stag's head of the Dean of Exeter. The right shield possibly depicts the coat of arms of either Bishop Brewer or Bishop Stapledon, both Bishops of Exeter in the medieval period. Running around the top of the lintel are carved angels with outstretched wings. The fireplace is framed by a slender stone shaft which rises from the ground on each side and is capped with a short pinnacle. Between the pinnacles run a number of fleur-de-lis.

The fireplace remained in the Chantry until the building was demolished in 1870. According to Lega-Weekes, the fireplace was salvaged, placed inside a packing case and left in a stable until was it purchased by a stonemason. In c1900 the fireplace was installed in the Deanery by Dean Earle where it remained until the early 1970s. The present paint scheme seen on the fireplace is the handiwork of a later Dean's son who painted it in the 1960s. The Deanery underwent various modifications between 1971 and 1972 and during the course of the building works the cathedral's own surveyor, Peter Gundry, came to the conclusion that the fireplace was Victorian.

What happened next is the subject of some debate. It has been claimed that the fireplace was crow-barred from the wall and thrown out of the window where it fell onto a rockery and smashed into pieces. Alternatively, it has also been said that when the component parts of the fireplace were collected from Exeter University, where it was eventually taken, there was no sign of damage or even dirt. Some of those involved at the time can recall visiting the Deanery and seeing the fireplace sat in the garden seemingly undamaged.

Interestingly, when the fireplace was removed from the Deanery left, the remains of a second elaborate fireplace of Beer stone were discovered behind it. Professor Michael Swanton took the John Coombe fireplace to Exeter University in the hope of installing it there when the Dean and Chapter showed no interest in keeping it. The fireplace wasn't installed at the university, or at Bowhill on the outskirts of the city as had been suggested. Instead John Allan of Exeter Archaeology eventually secured the fireplace for the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Queen Street where, until recently, it has been on display to the general public.

That is not quite the end of the story however. In 1923 the antiquarian Ethel Lega-Weekes raised the possibility that there were in fact two ornate fireplaces installed in the Chantry at the end of the 15th century. One was the John Coombe fireplace now in the museum and the other was presumed to be missing, perhaps destroyed when the building was demolished in 1870. The idea of the missing fireplace has persisted to the present day. The museum's website still claims that the Chantry "had two very elaborate late medieval fireplaces, one of which is now lost", but the mystery of the missing fireplace can now be solved.

The impetus behind the theory of the two fireplaces is a passage in George Oliver's 1861 book 'Lives of the Bishops of Exeter'. In the book he describes in some detail a "stately mantelpiece" in the great hall of the Chantry. The fireplace he describes is significantly different to the one which is now known as the John Coombe fireplace.

This disparity led Lega-Weekes and others to believe that a second fireplace must've once existed. According to Oliver, the 'missing' fireplace was modified between 1747 and 1762 by Precentor Milles who repainted it and "surmounted it with the arms of his family". Oliver describes ten complete armorial bearings on the fireplace whereas the John Coombe fireplace in the museum today only has two, only one of which remotely matches Oliver's description. Oliver also describes various "mouldings" which don't fit with the surviving Chantry fireplace. In fact, apart from Oliver mentioning the presence of John Coombe's initials, almost nothing in his description can be matched to the John Coombe fireplace as it exists today.

The drawing above right © Royal Academy, was recently discovered in the archives of the Royal Academy in London. It is labelled 'Chimney Piece in the Precentor's House at Exeter'. It was executed by Solomon Hart and is dated May 1833. The fireplace in the drawing is remarkably elaborate. There are three shields on the lintel and it is topped with a highly ornate ogee-headed canopy with three ornate finials. Inset into the canopy are three more shields, one of which is surmounted by a three-dimensional bishop's mitre. Above the lintel are a series of carved winged angels, framed by slender shafts which rise on each side. Its kinship with the Courtenay fireplace at the Bishop's Palace is striking. This drawing depicts the allegedly missing Chantry fireplace which was previously only known from George Oliver's description.

The ten armorial bearings mentioned by Oliver can now be located precisely on the fireplace which he described in 1861 left. I've followed Oliver's convention of starting with the central shields on each tier and then describing them from right to left:

1: "1st - Of Canterbury, impaled with Potter's". This matches the 1833 drawing exactly. Precentor Milles's father-in-law was Dr John Potter, the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1737 and 1747. 2: "The Precentor of Exeter's... Impaled with Milles's". This bearing wasn't depicted in the 1833 drawing. 3: "Milles's impaled with Potter's". This bearing also wasn't depicted in the 1833 drawing.

None of the details of the next four bearings were included in the 1833 sketch. At first glance it's difficult even to locate their position on the drawing but Oliver described the heraldry on the fireplace from top to bottom and these four were "on the deep moulding". The only place where the four coats of arms could've been located was between three of the winged angels on the lintel. 4: "Precentor's impaled with Roger Keys's". 5: "Bishop Grandisson's". 6: "Bishop Lacy's". 7: "Precentor's and John Coombe's".

The three shields on the main lintel, "below the mouldings", are the last to be described. 8: "In the centre. The arms of St. Edward, King and Confessor, as adopted by Richard II". This bearing consists of five gold marlets surrounding a cross impaled with the arms of the Plantagenet Kings of England, exactly as drawn by Solomon Hart in 1833. Oliver gets the last two coats of arms mixed up. He describes 9 as "Dexter - The see of Exeter impaled with Courtenay". This is actually the coat of arms to the far left at position No. 10. It matches the central armorial bearing on the Courtenay fireplace in the Bishop's Palace exactly. Oliver describes 10 as "three bends wavy" and he believed it was supposed to represent either the heraldry of either Brewer or Stapledon, both medieval Bishops of Exeter. Its correct position was at No. 9, as drawn by Hart.

Even more interesting is the fact that the drawing also proves that there never was a missing Chantry fireplace. The fireplace drawn by Solomon Hart in 1833, and described by George Oliver in 1861, and the John Coombe fireplace now in the museum are one and the same.

Compared with the photograph of the John Coombe fireplace at the top of this post, the one in the drawing looks completely different. There's no sign of the huge ogee-headed canopy on the fireplace today and eight of Oliver's armorial bearings are missing.

But there are numerous points of similiarity, two of which are shown in the image right. In the drawing, the initials 'JC' are present in the corners above identical side panels in exactly the same form as they appear on the fireplace in the museum. The lattice decoration on the lintel is, in places, exactly the same. The winged angels at the top of the lintel are also very similar as are the two framing stone shafts.

The 1833 drawing strongly suggests that at some point in its history the John Coombe fireplace was heavily modified and transformed from the fireplace drawn by Hart and described by Oliver into the now almost unrecognisible fireplace in the museum. But when did this occur? A photograph of the fireplace still in situ at the Chantry just prior to the building's demolition in 1870 shows that the current arrangement of the fleur-de-lis and pinnacles along the top was already present before the fireplace was removed from the Chantry. George Oliver's 'Lives of the Bishops of Exeter', which contains his description of the fireplace, was published in 1861, the same year that George Oliver died. It's possible that the description was made from notes taken some time before the book was published but it seems likely that the alterations took place between c1860 and 1870.

This is when the difficulties in interpreting the John Coombe fireplace as it exists today start to mount up with startling rapidity. To return to the 1833 drawing, it is simply not known whether it depicts the medieval form of the fireplace as it was installed by John Coombe in the Chantry between 1496 and 1499. The Chantry was sold in 1655 during the Commonwealth and possibly used as a hospital. Did the John Coombe fireplace sit in the great hall completely unaltered throughout this turbulent period? What condition was it in when the additions were made by Precentor Milles? Oliver states that Precentor Milles "repainted it" and added some of the heraldry between 1747 and 1762. Was pre-existing heraldry over-painted or were entirely new escutcheons added? The presence of the bishop's mitre sculpted above the coat of arms of Milles's archbishop father-in-law suggests that Milles made alterations to the fireplace which went beyond merely repainting some coats of arms.

It's possible that the entire florid canopy, i.e. everything above the lintel, is a mid 18th century invention. But then the overall form of the canopy could just as easily date to the end of the 15th century. Did the Victorians suspect that the canopy only dated to the 18th century which is why it was removed c1865 and the fleur-de-lis and pinnacles substituted in its place? Why would the canopy be removed at all? What happened c1865 which prompted such extensive alterations?

It's tempting to assume that only the ogee-headed canopy shown on the 1833 drawing was altered and the rest of the fireplace remained intact, but this would be untrue. The image right shows the lintel as it appears on Hart's drawing and as it appears today in the museum. The locations of what I believe were four small armorial bearings described by Oliver are encircled in red on the 1833 drawing. There is certainly some sort of carved element there which is independent of the winged angels. Hart made an effort to indicate some shadow suggesting that whatever it was stood proud of the stone background. If these were four small shields then they were either added in plaster, perhaps by Precentor Milles, or they were carved in the late 15th century from the stone of the lintel itself. Today there is no sign that they ever existed. The stone between the winged angels on the lintel in the museum is completely smooth. Why would Precentor Milles bother adding four small plaster shields? But if the shields were carved in stone then their total disappearance is almost incomprehensible unless the lintel itself had been modified too.

The central shield on the lintel, showing the Royal arms of Richard II, is also now missing. Was this another plaster addition which was subsequently removed? Did the medieval lintel really only have two shields at either side? Why would the medieval masons leave the central panel blank? From an aesthetic perspective, three shields would surely be preferable such as appear on the Courtenay fireplace (or five shields as once existed on the fireplace at the hall of the Vicars Choral). However I have been informed that this arrangement, with no shield, is an original feature, as was revealed when the fireplace was assembled for display at the museum in the early 1980s.

The winged angels drawn by Hart are out of alignment with the panels on the lintel when compared with the fireplace in the museum, but Hart made a series of drawings of architectural interiors in Italy which he hoped to publish in the 1840s so clearly he was an accomplished draughtsman.

Even more intriguingly, if the central shield as drawn by Hart was the exact same size as the two surviving shields then it doesn't seem possible that it would've fitted easily into the available space on the lintel as it exists today. Faint lines drawn around the central panel on the 1833 depiction suggest that prior to the alterations there was more room between the edge of the shield and the two little blind Gothic arches to the left and right. This can be seen on the image left. I've inverted the colours of the original drawing to make the faint lines and blind arches more visible. I've also added a central shield to the museum's fireplace and it's easy to see how the edge of the shield would be almost adjacent to the little cusped apertures. It's almost as though the lintel has shrunk. If Hart's drawing is remotely accurate and the central shield was indeed the same size as the remaining two then I believe that this is the most convincing piece of evidence in favour of the entire lintel having been radically remodelled in the 19th century.

One possibility suggested to me is that the width of the fireplace could've been reduced in size to fit a smaller aperture, an action which necessitated the removal of the central panel with the Royal arms of Richard II and the splicing together of the remaining sections. The 1870 photograph of the fireplace shows that at least the lower part of the wall to the left of the fireplace was constructed from 18th or 19th century bricks while the wall to the right was made of large stone blocks, probably a remnant of the medieval great hall.

I believe the fireplace was indeed dismantled c1865 and the lintel reduced in width. In order to accomplish this the central shield was removed and the remaining two halves spliced together, retaining only the edges of the central panel's lattice decoration. Presumably the component with the winged angels was also cut around to make the angels sit over the top of the reordered panels. It seems that the fireplace was not a Victorian copy as believed by the cathedral's surveyor in the early 1970s but neither is it a wholly medieval fireplace.

I've cobbled together an impression of what was probably the medieval form of the fireplace prior to c1865 above left. All of the suspected Victorian changes have been reversed (although the 1960s paintwork remains). The lintel has been restored to what I believe were its medieval dimensions, complete with the four little bearings between each of the winged angels and the wider central panel carrying a central shield. The Victorian pinnacles and fleur-de-lis have been stripped away although the exact nature of the upper part of the medieval fireplace remains unknown. Either it had the ornate canopy shown in the 1833 drawing or, as is shown in the image, it just had a simple horizontal top as is found on similar examples in Exeter.

There's no question that the John Coombe fireplace came out of the Chantry in 1870 but between there are huge question marks surrounding the fireplace's medieval form and the numerous alterations which have obviously taken place between c1499 and 1870. The reasons for the alterations and much else relating to its history remain the subject of conjecture. The discovery of the drawing in the archives of the Royal Academy has perhaps solved one of the mysteries but there are numerous others, just some of which have been elaborated upon here.

Unfortunately the John Coombe fireplace is no longer accessible to the general public. Following the recent refurbishment of the museum a lack of exhibition space has seen it relocated to the store room. Whatever its history might be, the fireplace remains an exceptionally fine piece of worksmanship. If it is not be displayed in the museum then perhaps it could be installed elsewhere in Exeter where it can be viewed and enjoyed by everyone. Detail of a winged angel below © Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

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