30.     Standidge and Co.                                                                1845

 

During the 1830s and 1840s a lot of time and effort was spent reflecting the sanitary conditions of the fast-expanding towns and cities and various reports were drawn up for the House of Commons on health issues. The cholera outbreaks in the early 1830s stirred action. In 1842, for example, a Select Committee paid particular attention to examining whether or not it was desirable from a public health viewpoint that cemeteries in large towns should be allowed to remain open. The committee’s report agreed with the view of the majority of the witnesses that the city cemeteries were overcrowded and a positive danger to health. The report urged that no new cemeteries should be opened within large towns. In a further report of 1845 Thomas Shapter (see also 32) wrote a chapter, accompanied by a plan, to illustrate the report on Exeter in the Health of Towns^[1]. 

Title: Plans & Sections of the City and Suburbs of EXETER, Showing the Sewerage, the Division of the City into Sanatory Districts, &c.

Size: 295 x 477 mm but no scale.

Imprints:   Health of Towns Inquiry (top right, above border) and 8voEd. (top right) and 64/ Standidge & Co. Litho London (bottom right). 

The area shown is from St. David's to the Workhouse and Colleton Crescent to the County Gaol and including the lines of sewers such as The Long Brook and The Barn Field Brook Sewers.. The plan shows some principal buildings: the Cathedral, main churches, the hospitals as well as burial grounds and the water reservoir. Two sections cross the town: horizontally at a scale of 5000 ft = 94 mm; and vertically at 400 ft = 63 mm. Conduit sources (bottom left) are shown. Heights are noted on roads.

Black and white copy. Both illustrations reproduced by kind permission of Devon Archives & Local Studies (OM B/EXE/1845/SHA).

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^[1] Pages 205-266 entitled Report on the Sanatory Condition of Exeter by Thomas Shapter MD, published in London by William Clowes and Sons for HMSO.

 46.     Thomas Kerslake                                                                 1873 (925) 

Thomas Kerslake (1812-1891) was born and educated in Exeter but moved to Bristol in 1827. With his brother-in-law he became a second hand bookseller. Although the partnership was dissolved in 1839 he continued in business and retired in 1870 after a disastrous fire. He then became interested in antiquarian studies, especially the Anglo-Saxon period of the south-west, and wrote a number of articles including one in 1890 about a fictional leader in Saxon southwest, Saint Richard the King of Englishmen.

Strictly speaking this is the second printed map of Exeter as it purports to show the area covered by the Saxon mound with the early fortifications at Exeter imposed as it might have been in 925, 1286 and 1778 A.D. It was included in an essay presented by Kerslake to the Archaeological Society. Kerslake wrote about the old division of the City ‘The Celt & Teuton in Exeter’ and it was printed in the Archaeological Journal, Volume 30 (pp.211-225), 1873. A number of changes were carried out before it appeared in Saint Richard; title moved to right; references under map removed; and the shaded area is a little different. 

Title: EXETER. A.D. 925-1286-1778.

Size:190 x 120 mm within borders with references below. No scale.

Signature: Standidge & Co. Litho, London E.C. 

A simple outline plan showing the streets and churches within the city walls, with both the old bridge and Stepcote Lane and the current bridge and Fore Street. The key numbers refer to the adjacent text where Kerslake describes a ‘double city’ with the southern part English and the Northern part British, noting the Celtic saints in the various Chapels north of the High Street.

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