Exeter - A city from time immemorial

Today was mainly spent in the City of Exeter, a city which Wikipedia maintains has been a City since Time Immemorial - that is a time before memories and history were recorded.

Exeter Cathedral

Breakfast at Lympstone Manor  

Before our visit to Exeter the day began at Lympstone Manor. The bed in the Dunlin Room at Lympstone was incredibly comfortable, but, as is usual on a holiday. I was awake by 4.30am and got up to post yesterday's photos on to Flickr and to begin the first of yesterday's blog posts.

At 7.30am when went down for breakfast and were sat in the same table as we had been for dinner the night before. Breakfast is served from 7.30am to 10am at Lympstone Manor, but we are always keen to get there early!

There was a large range of cereals, dried fruit, nuts, yoghurts etc available to choose from 

along with the cooked items and other items made to order. On that front Drew went with a Lemon Curd and I ordered Weetabix with hot water - which is my preferred way of eating this breakfast cereal. This caused no comment or confusion and was soon served. I sublimated it with dried fruit (banana, peach and plum) and nuts (hazelnuts and almonds). Which had the benefit of not only being tasty, but giving a good selection for my microbiome to be working on.

When it came to the cooked food, it being Friday, a day when we Catholics are encouraged to abstain from meat as a penance, I watched as Drew had a lovely cooked breakfast that he explained (as part of my penance) was extremely tasty and he was sad I was missing!! [Co-pilot's note: It was a shame, dear reader, as the bacon was cooked just as he would love it, nice and crispy, and the sausage had a high meat, low moisture content - it was lovely.]

I, in an unusual choice for me, opted for the smashed avocado on toasted campagna bread with a poached egg and smoked salmon. It turned out to be much tastier than I expected as the avocado was salty and had a zing of lemon through it. It had the virtue of making me feel very virtuous. I could hear my inner Tim Spector of Zoe commending my choices on behalf of my gut 😉 He is a firm advocate of Avocado, a fruit for which I don't normally have much time.

Travelling to Exeter

After breakfast we went back to our room, I loaded more photos and wrote the blog post about Thursday night's dinner. We packed and took the bags to the car before checking out after a wonderful stay.

From Lympstone Manor to Exeter is a nine mile drive. We had decided having not been to Exeter by car before to go to one of the well-advertised Park and Ride places that surround the city and bus it into the City Centre. 

The route we took, advised by Google Maps, which provides directions through the car's Android Auto interface advised we turn off the A376 and travel via Topsham, as shown above. We soon passed the Welcome to Exeter sign, followed as we crossed the River Exe with a welcome to Topsham, the ancient port, sign.

Park and Ride

We arrived at Honiton Road Park and Ride, parked the car in a large spacious car park and within ten minutes were on the bus into the City of Exeter.

Exeter

As mentioned at the top of this post Exeter has been a City since the time before the concept of cities had existed. Its commanding position at the end of the Exe Estuary has made it a centre of trade and government since the Iron ages. 

There is evidence in Southernhay, the historic heart of the City of human habitation in 200BCE (before the Christian era), by 60BCE the Roman General, later to be Emporar, Vespasian arrived with the Second Augustan Legion and established a wooden military fortress in Exeter of 42 acres. In a connection back to my home country, it was this same Legion that then went to establish its base in the City of Legions (Caerleon) in Wales.

In Roman times the City was known as Isca Dumnoniorum, which translates as Capital of the Dumnonii, the Celtic tribe which ruled the whole of the South West both before and after the period of Roman Rule. 

As the Saxon's arrived in this area the City changed its name to Moncton as it was the location of a large number of priories and abbeys. 

By 928, King Athelstone, son of Wessex's then England's first king Alfred lived in the town and called it Excanceaster (with the river name linked to the Saxon word for Roman enclosure, a word commonly found in English place names - Manchester and Winchester for example). Overtime this became corrupted to Exeter. 

The Exeter Guildhall celebrates this history when, on the outside of the building, built above the old Roman bath house, it claims its existence from 80AD to 1980AD. 

Coffee Time

The marketers of Costa Coffee had managed to get Drew an offer for his birthday of a cake when he bought a coffee. So after our first exploration of the City we went to use this offer. Drew's birthday was yesterday, but the offer was up to seven days, so into Costa we went for an Americano for me and a Latte for Drew along with his choice of a free baked goods item. He choose a Lemon Muffin.

Exeter Cathedral

After coffee we went to visit a number of Exeter's Churches. I mentioned earlier that Exeter was known for a short period as Moncton (monk town) and this history is evidence in the large number of churches in the centre of the City - these are St. Stephen’s, St. Pancras’, St. Petrock’s, St. Olave’s and St. Martin’s all within sight of each other and three within site of the major church of Exeter - Exeter Cathedral. More details of each of the churches can be discovered here. We visited three of them, St. Stephen's with its underpass, meaning the altar area is raised from the body of the Church and accessed by steps:

St. Martin's known for the colour of his stone as the Gingerbread Church.

St. Petrock's, now closed to facilitate Covid and post-Covid homeless accommodation in the city, but with access to its impressive bell room.

But, as already mentioned, most impressive of all, within its own grounds from which the rest of the City radiates is the Cathedral dedicated, as so many Norman Cathedrals are, to St. Peter. Founded in 1050 when the first Bishop of Exeter, Bishop Leofric moved, with papal approval, his see from Crediton to Exeter as the latter town developed and grew. 

The outside facade of the Cathedral is pictured at the top of this post. The inside is equally impressive with the North and South Transepts dating from the 12th century with the building being renovated and extended in 1270 and again in 1328.

The ceiling at 315 feet is the longest continuous medieval stone vault in the world. The multiple bosses, many of them finely decorated, aren't just there for decoration but as keystones locking the vaulting together. 

The above are some examples of the bosses, but there are many more examples, along with lots of other images from the Cathedral on Flickr, if you start here you can scroll left through all the Cathedral images.

Back to the Car

After two hours in the Cathedral and another walk along Exeter's central street, called High Street, we returned to the bus stop for the twelve-minute journey back to the Park and Ride. Our journey from Exeter to Exmouth, our home from home for the next two weeks, will be the subject of my next blog post. See you then!