Exetours XS Topsham and St Leonards

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XS. Topsham and Turf Stagecoach route 57 (double decker) 4 per hour - 00 15 30 45 past hour. 22 minutes Exeter Bus Station to Topsham. Possible stop Topsham. Great Western Railway. 2 per hour - 16 49 past hour. 15 minutes Exeter St David or Central to Exmouth. Or walk along canal (8 Km – flat- from Exe Bridge) – ferry, times to check.

Canal and River Walk

Larkbeare

Coaver c1850 for Milford family, bankers

Bellair c.1700 for John Vovler, grocer. Home of Dame Georgiana Buller

County Hall 1957-64 by H. McMorran, Staverton Bulders

Belle Isle Park

Salmon Pool Weir

Old Abbey probably 17th century, later converted to café redeveloped 1963..

St James's Priory, Exeter, a daughter priory of St Martin des Champs, Paris, a priory dependent on the Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. Of the priory founded a little before 1142 by Baldwin de Redvers, the Earl of Devon, on marshy ground southeast of Exeter above the River Exe there are no remains. The Cluniac priory was dissolved in 1444 and then demolished.

University of Plymouth Veysey Building, dental education facility. All that remains of Exeter College of Art campus (later Polytechnic South West)

Isca College. Formerly Priory School.

Millbrook Retirement Village

Exeter and Devon Crematorium opened in November 1963

Higher Wear Paper mill. The earliest record of a mill at Countess Wear, is c.1638: in the Exchequer Depositions Henry Peters confirms the erection of a mill at the site. A later deposition from Peter Trenchard, a paper maker, of St Thomas, states that he served an apprenticeship under Abraham Langdon at ‘Wear Paper Mills’ in about the year 1656. Anoth mill in Lower Wear active 1778-1829.

Countess Wear Road

47: Mount Wear House. L-shaped late C17 brick house with plaster and stucco finish. Formerly youth hostel

59: Countess Wear House 3 storeys, red brick house with main axis at right angles to road. Built circa 1770, but much altered in Queen Anne style in 1889

Countess Wear Bridge.  Thomas Parker of Topsham engaged to build the Countess Wear bridge. Work started in March 1771, opened 14 September 1774.

Canal Bridge. There was a bridge across the canal from at least 1821. The existing Swing Bridge structure dates from 1936. In May 1944, it was used in the preparations for the D-Day campaign as a rehearsal for the glider attack on the  bridge over the Canal de Caen (Pegasus Bridge) and the River Orne (Horsa Bridge), by the Second Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, on the night 5/6 June 1944.

Canal ended above Topsham, extended to Turf 1825/32.

Double Locks, built originally as a lock house in 1701, remodelled in 1827. Locks built 1698-1701.

Harpers Lakes created 2011.

Flood prevention works.

Swing Bridge by entrance to City Basin and junction of canal and river.

Welcome Inn c1840

Gas works 1836. Gasometers demolished 2015.

Option to return to Belle Isle via suspension bridge 1935)

Piazza Terracina

City Basin opened 1830. Railway arrived, turntables installed 1867.

Maritime Museum 1969-1997

Electricity station 1905-1955

Quay

Postern gate

Custom House 1680-1. Richard Allen builder, plasterwork John Abbot. Oldest surviving brick building in Exeter

Wharfingers Office 1778

Quay House 1680 (by 16^th cent quay wall

Fish market c1880

Wine warehouses 1878, 1892

Quay warehouses 1835

Bonded cellars (15) c1850

Larkbeare House 1862 for Sir John Bowring. 1877 Judges' Lodgings. Since 2014 wedding venue.

Port Royal, first pub in St. Leonard's c.1840

Saint Leonard 1876-86, previously 19^th cent classical building

Trew's Weir 1564-6

Trews Weir Paper Mills built 1780 paper mill from 1834-1980s.

Match factory 1774 once flax mill, Lucifer match factory 1851 census

Suspension bridge 1935

Belle Isle, Coaver