8.       Ichabod Fairlove                                                                                                 1709

 

In 1709 Ichabod Fairlove was the first surveyor to produce a plan of the city since Hooker and Robert Sherwood (who produced a number of manuscript maps and plans) nearly 100 years earlier. This was the first printed plan produced entirely in the City. The engraver, Joseph Coles also illustrated William Musgrave’s antiquarian works and the map was distributed by Edward Score, the Exeter bookseller. It included illustrations of the major buildings in the City and became the model for both Nicholls and William Stukeley in 1723 and remained the standard until John Rocque’s survey of 1744 (see 11). Only one edition is believed to have been printed and it was possibly issued separately as a broadsheet map.^[1]

 

Title: A True Plan of the City of Excester

Size: 545 x 450 mm with A scale of 1000 feet (= 102 mm or 1Mile = 540 mm.).

Signature: Ichd. Fairlove Surveyed Ios Coles Sculp 

There is a wreathed dedication: This plan is humbly dedicated to Mr. CALEB LOWDHAM Junr.  of the Citty Surgeon by Joseph Coles- 

Imprint: Sold by Edward Score Bookseller over agt  the Guild-hall            

The map is decorated with four vignettes in the corners: the So. West Prospect of the Cathedral; the Guildhall; the Work-House; and the Custom-House. The left hand panel contains a column with a lettered strip wound round it St. Peters Church foundd By K. Athelstan AD 932. 43 years Building and is surmounted by the Bishop’s Arms below two heraldic snakes twisted round two north points and the sun over the date Anno Domin MDCCIX. The right hand panel is similar but with the winding strip reading Urb. Condit. Anno Mundi 2855. Ant Christ 1100. The City’s Arms are above with the snakes, north points and sun but no date. The scale bar is vertical.

The plan is drawn with north to the left and following the Hooker format shows the city from just over the bridge to St. Sidwell and from St. David's Hill to Wynard’s Alms Houses on the London Road. Moving away from the bird’s-eye view it gives a better shape for the city. It is a street plan with only churches and the Bishop’s Palace drawn eye-view (but not the cathedral, shown with an internal plan). Principal buildings are either titled or numbered to the reference key. The Cathedral gates, the Great Conduit and the Alms Houses are shown. Of special note are the Shambles and the Bridewell in Goldsmiths Street, the Guildhall on High Street and the arch at the bottom of Key Lane. The serge industry is expanding: Rack Lane (11), illustrated on all maps so far, is identifiable but so, too, is the serge market with its stalls in Southgate Street (17), and there are racks set up at all points west of the city with Shilhay now covered^[2]. Houses are shown diagrammatically and far too small: for example, some 13 houses are shown on the east side of Cook Row, in Southgate Street, as against the 8 in Hooker’s plan of the city. The crane (Izacke’s wind mill) has gone from the quay. Note the spelling of Bunny for Bunhay and Paree for Paris (Street). Lethbridge’s Alms Houses (1668) in St. James Street are shown.

It is interesting to compare this with the following two entries (Nicholls and Stukeley) as it clearly was the model from which they both worked.

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^[1] Copies at DRO and WSL. Illustration Reproduced by kind permission of Devon Archives & Local Studies - OM B/EXE/1709/COL.

^[2] To the eye it actually looks as though there are  two Rack Lanes parallel to each other near the west gate, but they are, in fact, Rack Lane and Rock’s Lane.

 9.       Sutton Nicholls                                                                                 1723

 

Samuel Izacke was appointed Chamberlain in 1693, an office he kept for some 36 years. He, like Hooker and his father before him, carefully catalogued and recorded important Exeter events and in the process updated his father’s book, The Remarkable Antiquities of the City of Exeter (see 7). This appeared as The Second Edition: Now .... continued to the year 1723, by Samuel Izacke Esq., the present Chamberlain.^[1] The map, engraved by Sutton Nicholls (fl. 1680-1740), remained the same in subsequent editions.^[2]  

Title:  A True Plan of the City of EXCESTER Drawn & Ingraven by Sutton Nicholls

Size: 254 x 162 mm with A Scale of 1000 Feet (= 54mm). Signature in title. 

A faithful and well-executed, though smaller, copy of Fairlove covering the same area but retaining most of the former’s features: the scale bar is drawn vertically; serge racks proliferate; no attempt is made to show individual houses; only churches and Bishop’s Palace are drawn as views; and the important buildings are either titled or numbered but although the Guild Hall is highlighted he has forgotten to number it and add it to the key. Additions are the pecked lines to show the extent of the parishes and the inclusion of the Blue Maid’s Hospital of 1708 (previously only Maid’s Hospital). Nicholls has the spellings Bunnye and Paree Street and shows a different course to Genny Street and Milk Street. The title is in a simple ellipse.

The plan was reproduced in slightly reduced size in Freeman's History of Exeter, 1887 (see also 53 and 54).

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^[1] This edition was printed for Edward Score, John March and Nathaniel Thorne who were booksellers in Exeter, and for Samuel Birt in Ave-Marie-Lane, London. MDCCXXIII.

^[2] The 1724 edition omits Thorne’s name and the date. Editions for 1731 & 1734 have a reset title page dated 1724 and added plates of the Guild-Hall and the Conduit. The third edition, printed for the author and sold by Score and Birt, 1741, reverts to the 1723 title page except for Printed for Richard Izacke, son of the Author 1741. A 1757 edition has a reset title page but worded as 1723 except for the date MDCCLVII. A slightly reduced copy titled Exeter in the Seventeenth Century appeared in Freeman’s Exeter 1887, (see entry 53).