Missing Exeter paintings sought

The Exeter Express & Echo reports on a plea to find a missing batch of official paintings of pre-Blitz Exeter.

From the Express & Echo, March 22, 2011, Historian's plea for help over missing paintings:

The mystery of the missing Exeter paintings has prompted a city historian to ask Nostalgia readers for help.

Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the Exeter Blitz of 1942 and it is an anniversary that has prompted local art historian Dr Anthony Kelly to try to trace a number of missing paintings of Exeter which showed the city as it was just before the devastation of the German air raids.

The paintings were made by fine watercolour artists, who were employed by Kenneth Clark's wartime Recording Britain scheme.

The scheme was designed to ensure that even if enemy bombs could demolish ancient streets and buildings, an artistic record would still be passed on to posterity.

Two of the missing paintings
(scans from the contemporary book).

Recording Britain was a morale-boosting project involving the commission of 1500+ watercolours of British life and landscape. After the war, the Victoria & Albert Museum lent six Exeter paintings to Devon County Council. But when it attempted to recall them in 1990 for its permanent Recording Britain collection, the paintings, "believed to have been kept in Larkbeare House on the Topsham Road", couldn't be found.

The missing paintings, all identifiably signed, include one by Gladys Best of the now-demolished Chevalier House, along with other images of lost buildings by Claud Maurice Rogers (one, I think, depicts St Mary Steps) and Stanislaus Soutten Longley.

If anyone knows the whereabouts, Dr Kelly can be contacted at akelly3945@aol.com or via his website.

Other paintings in the series (some documented in the now-rare Recording Britain: Wiltshire, Somerset, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Arnold Palmer, Oxford University Press, 1949) are still extant at the V&A:

Street in Exeter, Claude Maurice Rogers, c. 1940.
Old Customs House, Exeter, Claude Maurice Rogers, c. 1940.
Bishop's Palace, Exeter, Stanislaus Soutten Longley, 1940.
A gateway, Exeter, Stanislaus Soutten Longley, 1940.
Topsham, from the river, Claude Maurice Rogers, c. 1940.

- RG Read more ...

Peninsula Arts, May 2011

The current University of Plymouth's Peninsula Arts programme lists two history events in May 2011: a Plymouth local history day, and a lecture on new archaeological results from the Royal Naval Hospital site.

7th May 2011:
Better one volunteer than three pressed men.
Local Studies Day: celebrating the history of Plymouth and the surrounding area with talks and exhibitions. This year's schedule is:

• Ford Park Cemetery - Past achievement and future plans. Celebrating a successful community driven volunteer heritage project with Dr Henry Will, MBE and Pat Luxford.
• The changing face of the National Trust. Simon Gardner explains how the organisation is evolving in and around Plymouth.
• Their songs live on - the life and work of Sabine Baring-Gould. Martin and Shan Graebe perform songs from the collection.
• John Foulston, Architect. Jo Cox takes a fresh look at the man and his architecture.
• Plymouth's Past on Film. Footage from the South West Film and Television Archive.

9am-4.30pm, 7th May, Robbins Conference Centre, University of Plymouth. Tickets for the day cost £16 with lunch or £10 without lunch. Closing date for bookings: 1 April 2011. See local libraries or www.plymouth.gov.uk/localstudiesday2011 for further details and booking form.

---

Thursday 19th May:
The Excavation of the 18th and 19th-century Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth: Surprising Results.
Talk by Dr John Pamment-Salvatore, former City Archaeologist, Plymouth. Archaeological excavation close to the present Athenaeum Theatre in Plymouth revealed part of a cemetery operating at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar. Evidence from initial study of the bone remains has provided a graphic story of the ship-board injuries whilst documentary evidence from the Hospital itself shows that it was run in the fashion of a prison.
7 pm, 19th May, Devonport Lecture Theatre, Portland Square Building. Tickets £5, concessions £3, free for Friends of Peninsula Arts, UoP students and staff, and Plymouth Proprietary Library members. See Peninsula Arts, Plymouth Proprietary Library series, for more details and booking. Read more ...

Salutation Inn, Topsham

Last week I had the opportunity of a tour of the Salutation Inn in Topsham, an 18th century coaching inn under renovation: sights included its magnificent Assembly Room, and a gruesome find in the attic.

Salutation Inn, Topsham: according to the Regional Architecture of the West of England (Sir Albert Edward Richardson, Charles Lovett Gill, 1924) the columns on either side of the coach entrance were originally Doric and made of timber.

The Assembly Room, Salutation Inn, Topsham

A particular highlight was the chance to see for the first time the inside of the Assembly Room, the large room that overhangs the coach entrance of the Salutation. This must have seen many historic gatherings: for instance, it was the venue for the after-event elite party on the day in 1793 when Tom Paine was hanged in effigy in Topsham - see previously) - as an article in the early 19th century pamphlet The Republican tells us:

The officers of the navy and army, resident at Topsham, and the Gentlemen of the town, repaired to the Assembly Room, at the Salutation Inn, to drink the King's health; and the Rev. Mr. Carrington being unanimously requested to take the chair, and having complied in a very obliging and polite manner, many loyal toasts were drank, and many excellent songs were sung, particularly one printed and dispersed amongst the company upon the occasion.
- The Republican, Volume 9, 1824, ed. Richard Carlile

The room must also have been used when the Salutation Inn was the headquarters in 1794 of Colonel Robert Hall's Devonshire & Cornwall Fencibles during the War of the First Coalition.

Exeter Memories has some history of the inn and its historical uses, but there's a deal more to be found. A skim of the British Library 19th Century Newspapers archive finds the Salutation had extremely varied use in the 19th century: for balls, public meetings, property auctions, society dinners, coroner's inquests, and even as unofficial mortuary for people found drowned in the Exe.

On the subject of mortuaries, one of the objects discovered in the renovation was this mummified cat, of unknown age, found in the attic. It has been it has been nicknamed "Tonic" because it has a gin trap on its foot; it's unknown if this is how it met its death or if it was added as a posthumous detail. Such cats very occasionally turn up in old buildings; sometimes due to accidental incarceration, and sometimes placed there ritually (Margaret M Howard's paper 'Dried Cats', Man, no 252, Nov 1951, pp149-151, documents 25 examples). Another example was found in Ugborough, near Plymouth, in 2009, as reported in the Telegraph of 22 Apr 2009: 400-year-old mummified cat found in walls of cottage.

"Tonic", found in Salutation Inn, Topsham

Addendum. There seems to be a slight mystery about the Salutation sign (left) that originally hung on the frontage of the Assembly Room. It was removed some time after the Salutation ceased trading, when it presumably belonged to the building's then owner, Punch Taverns.

It's evidently around Topsham - I photographed it when it was on display at the launch of the Topsham Museum book Topsham Inns on the Globe Hotel August 24th 2010.

Does anyone know anything of its whereabouts and ownership?

- RG Read more ...