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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Royal Exeter



Leave me alone

We may be sharing a bed but just because you want to get up at some ridiculous hour of the morning doesn’t mean I have to.



Help please!

While photographing the half-marathon last Sunday I passed a garden with these flowers in.  


 They have naturalised in the grass like Snowdrops, Bluebells or Wild Garlic but I can’t identify them.   


Does anyone know what they are please?


Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee 

Some places are getting ready for celebrations which will take place around the 5thJune bank holiday.  

 Exeter, where I am staying, has lots of associations with this and former queens of England. 


And the first Queen Elizabeth

By contrast Queen Elizabeth I had been on the throne just 38 years when this plaque was put on no 1 Cathedral Close in Exeter by John Dyer. 


The building was erected about 60 years earlier, around the 1630s.


Many guide books to Exeter refer to Mol's as a coffee house opened by an Italian called Mol in the 16th century. In addition, they often state that Elizabethan seafarers such as Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins met to discuss their victory over the Armada, in the upper oak lined room of Mol's. 

However, new academic research has shown that much of the history of this building was concocted by a Mr Worth, who ran a gallery from the premises in the late 19th and early 20th century.  Enterprising chap Mr Worth!   

In reality, the building, along with Hanson's, next door, was built by the Cathedral Authorities to house 'Annuellars', or priests.   It was around 1596 that Dyer leased out the ground floor for use as a customs house and it is probable that he wished to indicate this official function by putting up the coat of arms.
It was around 1726 that Mary Wildy opened Mol's as a coffee shop and Mol (being a diminutive of Mary) had nothing to do with Worth's fictitious Italian.  For the next hundred or so years, the coffee house was run by seven women, providing a quiet meeting and reading place for the gentlemen of Exeter.


The Royal Clarence Hotel

The Royal Clarence Hotel in Exeter was the first inn in England to be named a hotel. 

Established in 1769 it was bought and re-named by a Frenchman in 1770. 


 It was named after the toddler son of George III, William Henry, Duke of Clarence, who was to become William IV, predecessor to his niece Queen Victoria.


Parliament Street in Exeter – and another Queen

This is Parliament Street in Exeter.    


Not the street I am standing in but the one behind the lady passing by.   




The formal naming of this alleyway as a street is thought to have been an intentional Exeter insult to Parliament in the 1830s.   


It was named to contrast with the new broad carriageway through the market area which was dedicated to the young Queen Victoria.It is alleged to be the narrowest street in the world.


And back to an Elizabeth II Jubilee

Two of a number of commemorative plaques put up around Exeter at the time of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.






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