37.     Featherstone & Co. I                                                            1852

 


The Featherstone company of lithographers and printers produced two maps of Exeter in the 1850s (see also 40). William Charleton Featherstone was born circa 1794-95 in Plymouth and died 3rd February 1858 in Exeter. He married Jane and they had one son, Samuel, but it was Jane who registered William’s death and it was probably she who announced the sale of her late husband’s business to John Pollard in the Exeter Flying Post of 18th March of the same year. William worked from a large number of addresses and he is listed at 67 Fore Street in Pigot’s 1822 directory and under the Weekly Times Office 1828. As early as 1825 he printed a broadsheet on the proposed railway to Exeter (printer to J Godfrey). Between September 1832 and April 1833 18 issues of The Western Spy were published: the first two under Featherstone, the others by W C Pollard. He also published the Western Times for a while but severed connection with the paper to start up Featherstone’s Exeter Times in 1836 which was not successful and ran for only four months. 

Title: MAP OF THE CITY OF EXETER, EMBRACING ALL THE Alterations and Improvements to the Present Period.

Size: 445 x 590 mm with scale Chains 22 = 73 mm.

Imprint: DRAWN, PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY FEATHERSTONE & Co. Lithographers and Printers. 246, High Street, Exeter. 

A panel on both sides shows the ‘Street List’. There is a scale bar and the City Arms. There is a note on population: Population 1851, City of Exeter, 32,818 but including St. Thomas &c. 38,886. Three panels at the bottom list the parishes, the churches and public buildings. One interesting feature is the ‘cross’ shape to the City Prison which reappears on later maps: Warren correctly showed the prison as a shallow ‘H’ shaped building.

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