Links:
1. Introduction |
2. North side west |
3. Parade of shops |
4. North side east 5. South side east | 6. South side west.
Magdalen Road, Exeter:
using historical sources to track Mount Radford village street through time
compiled by Ian Maxted
Exeter Working Papers in Book History, 34
2024
Magdalen Road, Exeter: using historical sources to track Mount Radford village street through time
Its production was generously sponsored by Fowler Financial Planning Limited 15 Magdalen Road, Exeter EX2 4TW.
No ISBN has been assigned as it was considered to be a draft for a more definitive edition.
Print copies can be supplied, price £10.00. Email ianmaxted@hotmail.co.uk
The right of Ian Maxted to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2024, 2026.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. This licence enables re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
Introduction
Mount Radford village street has survived three horrendous years, suffering through covid and lockdown, post-covid austerity, made worse by the war in Ukraine, and the severe disruption of the recent road works in 2023. Now it has emerged and we can celebrate the unique heritage of each of the businesses along the parade of shops, looking back over almost two centuries of change.
While the present work concentrates on the parade of shops along the north side of Magdalen Road between Denmark Road and College Road, other properties along the road are also included, but details are briefer with little attempt to track occupants. The photographs of individual properties were mostly taken in 2022, before the recent road works.
Taken together, this book and the various web pages detailed in the list of sources at the end provide a useful and interesting historical resource for the community and for educational project work, and also help to promote this very special parade of shops. It certainly shows how businesses have changed over time. Not so long ago our street had a bank and a post office, and gone too are the servant registries and fly proprietors of Victorian times.
The recent changes, which were awaited with mixed feelings by traders, residents and visitors alike, have certainly changed the atmosphere of the street. In July 2023 a representation was made to the licensing authorities against the opening of a new eating establishment on the grounds that it will “promote antisocial behaviour and noise pollution by allowing even more patrons to drink until late, outside, on a residential street” leading to "serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity", and crime and disorder. The petitioner seems to have a dim view of those who might frequent the street, but there has been a public house and eating places along the street for more than a century. The effect of the new layout should certainly be monitored, music and outside seating during the evening strictly limited, with a ban on external heating, which few businesses can afford anyway in this age of rising energy costs.
Thanks are due to all those who have offered advice and support or provided new information and corrections. They include David Baker, who let me copy most of the early photographs from those in his own collection, David Smith whose webpage Looking at St Leonards is a mine of information, the St Leonards Neighbourhood Association who also have a useful webpage listed among the sources at the back of the book, the traders who have contacted me with information including particularly Fowler Financial Planning who have sponsored the publication of the first fruits of my research.
This project started as a lockdown occupation, and is still not complete. Much remains to be investigated in the Exeter City archives and other resources held in the Devon Heritage Centre. If you have information to offer for the websites or a fuller edition, you can contact the compiler by email: ianmaxted@hotmail.co.uk. There are many resources that remain to be investigated, and they could lead to a bigger and better celebration of this unique Exeter village street.
Magdalen Road goes back not just for two centuries but for almost two millennia. It is probable that the Roman road from Londinium to Isca Dumnoniorum (iter XV of the Antonine itinerary, dating from about 300 CE) divided at what is now Livery Dole before reaching the east gate of Exeter, sending off a spur road along the line of Magdalen Road and Magdalen Street to the south gate of the Roman city. The route was certainly in use during medieval times, when part of its length served as the boundary between St Leonard's parish and St Sidwell.
Although it does not feature on John Ogilby's Magna Britannia in 1675, it is recorded on Benjamin Donn's map of Devon in 1765 but, although Magdalen Street was built up from medieval times, until the 1830s few houses are recorded on maps east of the Shitbrook valley (an open sewer whose name is coyly preserved today by Chute Street further upstream), where the Magdalen Hospital was situated by Bull Meadow since at least 1161, and the road led to Magdalen gallows located on the parish boundary in the 18th century. In 1832 Magdalen Bridge was constructed across the valley by the builder Henry Hooper and Denmark Road was cut through from Barnfield Road, but it received no houses, nor indeed a name, until about 1876. In the early 1830s the development of Mount Radford began on the south side of Magdalen Road, which on John Wood's map of 1839 is described as "Magdalen New Road".
A scatter of properties along the north and south sides is shown in Robert Dawson’s map of 1832 and Schmollinger’s map of 1835. Piped water arrived in 1833 and gas in 1835 to serve the new development. On the north side, in St Sidwell’s parish, about fifteen houses are recorded up to St Leonard's Road (until 1880 named Mount Radford Terrace) on the 1835 map drawn by R. Brown, engraved in London by W. Schmollinger and published by R. Colliver of Holloway Street, Exeter, and they are also shown in more detail in John Wood’s map prepared for a valuation made for the Exeter Improvement Commissioners and the Guardians of the Poor by Rowe, Cornish and Hooper in 1838 and published separately in 1840.
Properties in Magdalen Road seem to have been numbered as early as 1838 along the north side as far as Mount Radford Terrace, but infill development along the frontage of Magdalen Road in the latter half of the 19th century meant that many properties remained unnumbered and the use of street numbers to refer to individual properties was erratic until the 1870s. In 1893 the whole street was renumbered with odd numbers along the north side and even numbers along the south side. A miscalculation of the density of the redevelopment, which was then still under way, meant that the number 27 was not at first used. There was much rebuilding in the 1890s, partly to replace private residences with shops. The eastern end of the Magdalen Road parade of shops was destroyed in the 4 May 1942 blitz. Private residences on the southern side of the road also suffered badly. Only one person in Magdalen Road was killed, Laura Augusta Tompson, aged 84, of 75 Magdalen Road.
The earliest post-War large-scale plan of Exeter, dating from 1950, shows that properties along the street frontage between 47 and 67 were destroyed and still not redeveloped although businesses in 51 and 59, both set back from the road, were operating.
Rebuilding was by 1958 substantially complete but a final renumbering did not take place until 1962 after all post-War redevelopment had been completed. This had the overall effect of lowering street numbers in the middle of the street above 25 by two, number 27 finally coming into use, although the situation in the bomb-damaged areas is more complex and the precise location of sites is uncertain, as the numbering at the east end of the street by the Mount Radford Inn was raised by two. The only remaining bomb site on the village street is number 61, which has long been occupied by car dealers and has never been redeveloped.
Traffic calming measures were introduced in 1994 but, following heated discussions, the traders hung out flags the following year to celebrate the end of the disruption caused by the short-lived scheme.
The unusual nature of the parade of shops attracted the attention of the Historical Association who in 2010 produced a Magdalen Road Lesson Plan, aimed at primary school children, which "focused on changes in one local set of shops (in Magdalen Road) and looked at the impact of the World War II Exeter blitz on the area".
The Guardian newspaper on 13 December 2018 included Magdalen Road in its "Ten cool shopping districts around the world", describing it as a "gem of wonderful independently run shops [...] which pride themselves on being local and sustainable". It shares the accolade with places like Leiden in the Netherlands, Montmartre in Paris, Karolinen in Hamburg, Novaya Gollandiya (New Holland) in St Petersburg and the Distillery district in Toronto.
It may have been the publicity generated by this that led to Magdalen Road, eastward as far as St Leonard's Road, being included within the boundary of Exeter's Business Improvement District (BID), managed through InExeter, in July 2019. A traffic count was undertaken the same month, and it was clear that traffic management measures were under consideration.
The arrival of covid-19 and lockdown in March 2020 led to the section of Magdalen Road between Denmark Road and College Road being made one-way during June 2020, in the interests of “social distancing” during the covid epidemic. In June 2022 it was decided to make the new traffic flow permanent and from January to May 2023 work was undertaken at a cost of £900,000 to bring this to fruition with a westbound vehicle lane, a cycle lane contraflow and a widened pavement on the north side with space for tables and seating as well as trees planted in raised beds.
Magdalen Road in 1888, from the Ordnance Survey 1:500 town plan
So, let us walk east from the South Gate, bearing in mind that there was some uncertainty in early times exactly where Magdalen Street ended and Magdalen Road began. The first stops on this walk are premises noted as Magdalen Road in early newspapers, but actually in Magdalen Street. They have not normally been verified in the street directories.
Mortimer's Exeter directory 1874, the earliest directory to be arranged by street.
Besley's Exeter directories: 1878-1955.
Kelly's county directories: 1883-1939.
Kelly's Exeter directories: 1956-1973.
Bray's Exeter directories: 1981-1987.
Exeter directory: 1991.
Google Streetview: 2003-2022.
Much information in this book is to be found on two linked web pages used in its preparation:
Magdalen Road Exeter through time takes each shop in turn and attempts to track its occupancy since the 1840s. It is a version of the present book and is being continuously updated for a future edition.
https://exetereme.blogspot.com/2022/06/magdalen-road-exeter-through-time.html
Mount Radford village street: historic maps shows the street from Denmark Road to College Road around the time new large-scale maps appeared, and correlates each map with a contemporary historical source, normally a trade directory.
https://exetereme.blogspot.com/2022/07/mount-radford-village-street-historic.html
Cornforth, David. St Leonard's: a short history. In: Exeter Memories, 2007. Online resource: http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/stleonards.php accessed 13/10/2022
Dymond, Robert. History of the suburban parish of St Leonard, Exeter. Exeter: James Townsend, 1873. 35 pages : maps ; 23 cm.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/History_of_the_Suburban_Parish_of_St_Leo/jatCAAAAYAAJ accessed 14/10/2022 (does not include the maps in the original publication).
Exeter City Council. Listed buildings quick list (last updated November 2012). Exeter: Exeter City Council, 2012.
https://exeter.gov.uk/planning-services/heritage-and-environment/listed-buildings/listed-buildings-in-exeter/ accessed 14-10-2022.
Genuki. Exeter: St. Leonard. In: Genuki, 2015. A useful guide to resources.
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/DEV/Exeter/StLeonard. accessed 14/10/2022
Bristol City Council. Know your place – Devon. Bristol: Bristol City Council, 2022. Overlaps current and historic mapping. Search for location: "St Leonard's, Exeter, Devon, England, GBR"
https://maps.bristol.gov.uk/kyp/?edition=devon accessed 14-10-2022.
St Leonards Neighbourhood Association. Home page. Includes information on each trader.
http://www.slna.org.uk/index.html accessed 14/10/2022.
St Leonards neighbourhood news. Exeter: St Leonards Neighbourhood Association, 1981 to date. Six issues a year. File held by the Westcountry Studies Library, in the Devon Heritage Centre in Sowton. This has not yet been searched in detail.
Smith, David. Looking at St Leonard's, Exeter. Exeter : David K. Smith, 2011.
https://lookatstls.blogspot.com/ accessed 14-10.2022.
Venn, Gilbert. St Leonards. Exeter: Exeter Civic Society, 1982. 48 pages : illustrations, maps ; 15x21 cm. (Discovering Exeter ; 2). Currently under revision.
https://exetercivicsociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Book-2-St-Leonards.pdf
