Looking Back in time.

Edward Wilkinson from Withycombe Methodist Church, who is the Honorary Secretary of Exmouth Family History Club, has been asked to write a History of Tower Street.

Much of the early history of the two Churches are very much bound up in each other as members moved from one Church to the other for a variety of reasons, such as where their home was, or who their friends or business associates were, and in times past, who their employer was. Exmouth and indeed Devon itself, was much different in those days. Not only no TV or telephones, but no railway. Not even the Exeter Road from the Parade to Saddlers Arms existed at that time. Houses were much smaller for the ordinary workman, with no indoor water, electricity, gas or even oil lamps. So life for most people was very hard.

Methodism came to Devon at the end of the 18^th century. It was in 1739 that Rev. John Wesley, an Anglican clergyman, came to comfort his bereaved sister-in-law following the death of his brother, Rev. Samuel Wesley, the headmaster of Blundell’s School at Tiverton. Peter Blundell had founded a school at Tiverton in 1604 for the benefit of local children, and many have benefited from his benevolence. In 1739 there was not even the much maligned A38 road, more recently called the longest country lane in England, as it wends its way from Penzance to Leeds. At that time, travel from Tiverton to Exeter was on foot or by horseback, up the hill from Stoke Canon and down the old Tiverton Road, at best a stone surfaced road within the City and a dirt track in the villages and countryside, often muddy and pot-holed. For the infirm or those with goods or small children to move, the open carriers cart would have been a bumpy ride.

On Sunday, November 25^th 1739, Rev. John Wesley preached his first sermon in Exeter. Less than six years later, in May 1745, the members of the Methodist society had been meeting in a hall behind the Exeter Guildhall. When they left they were attacked by a mob of rioters supported by the local Anglican clergy. The Methodists were pelted with filth, and both men and women were so savagely beaten that many had broken bones, and they were rolled in the kennel, the road’s gutter.