Appendix B

 John Richards

John Richards (1690-1788) was born at Mariansleigh, North Devon and received a grammar school education. He was apprenticed to Abraham Voysey, a joiner in St. Thomas’s who made Sea-quadrants. He succeeded to a business as joiner and builder and it was as a builder that he designed and built the New Hospital. However, even before completing the hospital he had worked as a surveyor. Although he was carrying out surveys for the Chamber as early as 1739 it was not until September 1746 that he was officially appointed as the City’s Surveyor. In 1744, on behalf of the Hospital of St. John, he surveyed the Manors of Clyst St. Laurance and Clyst-Gerard; in 1746 he surveyed the manor of Teign-Harvey; again in 1746 he surveyed five tenements in the parish of Bovey-Tracey; as well as tenements in Culliton, Newton Ferrers and Teignmouth. He also surveyed other properties for the Chamber in connection with charities in Awliscombe, Uffculm, Halberton, Sowton, Sidbury, Buckland Newton (in Dorset), Lyme Regis, and Exmouth. Most of these maps, together with those of his successor and others, are bound into a special ‘Book of Vellum’ ordered for the mapping of all the City Chamber’s lands, estates and properties. The surveyor (i.e. John Richards) was to be paid £105 for the whole work or at the rate of 5s for each tenement in town and at the rate of 6s an acre for estates in the country. At the end of his appointment in 1760 he was paid £120, the balance of his bill. In the same year William Hayman was appointed as the Chamber’s Surveyor with a salary of £35 per annum.[1]

Richards' surveys were bound together in what is known as the Exeter Chamber Map Book:[2]

This Book contains a Sett of Maps, or Charts, of all the lands and Tenements belonging to the Chamber of Exon, situate within the City and County of the City of Exon and elsewhere; carefully plann’d, and laid down, in their just Proportions, by the several Scales inserted in them respectively Together with written Descriptions of each particular Tenement and the Dimensions & Boundaries thereof. [3]

The book contained some 28 maps of which the latest was dated 1786. Of these Map 19 is dated 1744, Map 20, 1746, and a reference in the Act Book notes that Richards was paid for a map of the Slow Tenement in 1739 (Map 23). All three pre-date his appointment, and within the Reference Tables others can be post-dated. All these maps contain lists of the property and their occupants at the time of drafting. They are all manuscript plans on parchment and coloured. It is assumed that all the early ones were surveyed (and drawn) by John Richards.

It is probably no coincidence that John Richards’ surveys were completed just after John Rocque had drawn his large map of the City. Rocque was a well-respected surveyor of estates and was engaged in drawing a 24-sheet map of London at this time. He would hardly have begun his Exeter work without making contact with or obtaining permission from the Chamber, and they would surely have referred him to their own surveyor. It is also unlikely that Richards did not make contact with Rocque. Co-operation at some level is a distinct possibility.

The accuracy of Richards' own surveys suggest that they each took some considerable time in the first drafting. The similarity of style and the length of information on the tenancies also suggest a later completion and an execution by one draughtsman. Whether this is reflected in a passage of eleven years is doubtful but presumably the surveys should be dated to 1746 and their final drafting to 1757, when they were formulated to form the ‘Book of Vellum’.

Maps 2-16 are supplementary to Map 1. They cover the city and the lands immediate to the walls in detail and to a larger scale. Map 17 is a plan of the river and is listed in the Appendix. Maps 18-23 & 28 show various properties in Devon, but not in Exeter, that belonged to the Chamber. Maps 24 & 25 show lands in St. Sidwell, Northernhay and Exland. Map 27 shows the run of pipes and audits.


Exeter Quay from Cotton's An Elizabethan Guild 1873

Return to Introduction

[1] Taken from Richards' obituary in the Exeter Flying Post  in 1878 and Ravenhill & Rowe (2002).

[2] The maps are listed in Devon Maps and Map Makers by Mary Ravenhill & Margery Rowe (2002) at page 184ff (Volume I).

[3] The book has collection number ECA Act Book 14,f,228A.


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