The destruction of Magdalen Street Exeter

The destruction of Magdalen Street Exeter

Besleys’ Streets Directory of Exeter in 1906 has the entry:
33 Pyle, Charles William, shoeing forge
34 Stokes, William, Valiant Soldier Inn
Here is Holloway Street
This was the junction that we know from our post on Magdalen Street that
Thomas Joce identified as a corner on the former Saxon/Roman road just outside
the old South Gate of Exeter. Along both streets were handsome 1830s’ buildings
with ornate grey stucco* frontages, still very new when John Carpenter moved
into his premises some time in the 1840s. A photograph from the Express & Echo
newspaper in June 1977 shows that nos. 42–46 were pinkwashed and all still
had their elegant mouldings over the door and round the sash windows. But they
were derelict, and nos. 44–46 were about to follow no. 33, The Valiant Soldier,
and almost all of Holloway Street, into dust. They were, in David Pearce’s words,
‘inconveniently sited old buildings’ in the way of the development of the city.**
Much of Magdalen Street and Holloway Street had already been demolished in
1962 to facilitate a new ring road development, and nos. 44–46 went 15 years
later when the inner bypass was constructed, despite having (with nos. 42 and
43) been Grade II listed in June 1974 as ‘buildings of particular historical and
architectural interest’.
Pearce outlines the use of a ‘dangerous structure note’ (DNS), which could be
enforced if a building was thought structurally unsafe or unfit for human
habitation; but Magdalen/Holloway Streets had reached that condition only
through deliberate neglect of their fabric since 1945. They formed the last intact
part of the historical city landscape almost untouched by the May 1942 blitz;
apart from the Georgian estate there were timber-framed houses coeval with The
Valiant Soldier and Roman artifacts from the garrisons in the city and at
Topsham. When nos. 44–46 were torn down it was found that the 1830s’ stucco
exterior was a façade, behind which was the 1659 town house of the ‘common
councilman’ John Matthew, with intact seventeenth-century panelling, fireplaces
and stairs, one of the earliest brick and most architecturally important buildings
in the city.
In the same 1977 demolition, Magdalen House (nos. 39–40 Magdalen Street) was
lost, ‘another pointless casualty of the ... inner bypass’.*** This was the ‘smart
house’ of Dr Michael Lee Dicker, built around 1727. Dicker was born in Exeter in
1673 but became a student of Dr Herman Boerhaave in Leiden before setting up
his Exeter practice in 1718. Boerhaave (see later post) became known as ‘the
father of physiology’ and pioneered a clinical approach to medicine. Magdalen
House was a handsome three-storey brick building with a stucco façade and a
pediment frieze of shells, acanthus leaves and urns that in Jacqueline Warren’s
words was ‘unique to Exeter’. The frontage was completed by fluted pilasters
and Corinthian capitals and its original panelling and staircase were still in place
at the time of its demolition; it was thought important enough to be given Grade
II listed status as early as 1953 and was in reality not impacted by the bypass
and, with the properties on the north side of Magdalen Street between South
Street and the entrance to Southernhay, was needlessly destroyed.****

Thanks Barbara !