 "Livery Dole Chapel with the old alms-houses taken down in 1850". View from south-east drawn by W.Spreat of Exeter | |
| Location | Exeter |
|---|---|
| Region | Devon |
| Type | Ancient site |
Livery Dole in Exeter, Devon, is an ancient triangular site between what is today Heavitree Road and Magdalen Road, in the eastern suburbs of Exeter. It was most notoriously used as a place for executions, and has contained an almshouse and chapel since 1591.
The name "Livery Dole" is first recorded in a document of 1279 and probably derives from the Old English Leofhere, a man who owned the land, and dole, meaning a piece of land. [1]
There were two places in Livery Dole used for executions. Until 1531, heretics were burned at the stake near the modern day junction of Magdalen Road and Barrack Road. From 1531 to 1818 hangings were performed on a site near College Avenue known as "Magdalen Drop". [2]
The most notable execution was the 1531 burning at the stake of the Protestant martyr Thomas Benet. Lighted furze was pushed into his face when he refused to deny as heresy his action of nailing on the west door of Exeter Cathedral a message proclaiming the pope to be an Anti-Christ and rejecting his supremacy in religious affairs. [3]
In 1909 a monument in the form of an obelisk of Dartmoor granite was erected to Benet's memory in nearby Denmark Road. This monument was designed by Harry Hems and was erected with money raised through public subscription. It also commemorates the martyrdom of Agnes Prest who in 1557 was burnt for heresy at the stake in Southernhay. Two bronze sculpted relief panels by Harry Hems on the base of the obelisk depict Benet banging on the door of the Cathedral and Prest burning at the stake. [3] The following inscriptions are contained on two bronze plaques affixed on opposite sides of the base:
"In grateful remembrance of Thomas Benet, M.A. who suffered at Livery Dole A.D. 1531 for denying the supremacy of the Pope and of Agnes Prest who suffered on Southernhay A.D. 1557 for refusing to accept the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Faithful unto death".
And:
"To the glory of God & in honour of his faithful witnesses who near this spot yielded their bodies to be burned for love to Christ and in vindication of the principles of the Protestant Reformation this monument was erected by public subscription AD 1909. They being dead yet speak".
According to Charles Worthy, in his History of the Suburbs of Exeter (1892), the iron ring which was placed around the victims' bodies and the chain which attached them to the stake were found in 1851 during rebuilding work on the almshouses. [4]
Occupying the apex, or easternmost part, of the triangular site is the Chapel of Saint Clarus, an English missionary martyred in about 894 near the River Epte in Normandy. [5]
The present building made from red Heavitree stone dates from a re-building of 1592 by Sir Robert Dennis (died 1592) of Holcombe Burnell, but it was built originally between 1418 and 1439 to serve as a chantry in which to pray for the souls of persons executed on this spot. [6] The chapter roll of 1439 mentions the Livery Dole Chapel as "Capella Sancti Clari extra portam australem infra parochiam de Hevetre" ("The Chapel of Saint Clarus outside the southern gate (of the City of Exeter) within the parish of Heavitree"). In the year 1418 however the chapel was not included amongst a deed of that date found in the 19th century amongst the records of Exeter City Corporation [7] listing all the other chapels in Heavitree, namely St Clements and St Eligius.
Sir Robert Dennis (1525–1592) of Holcombe Burnell and Bicton stated in his will dated 25 July 1592 and proved 22 September 1592, that he had "designed to set aside a plot of ground and to erect an alms-house and chapel for a certain number of poor people with weekly stipends and certain yearly commodities, as would appear in a devise signed and sealed by him". [8] He appointed his son Sir Thomas Dennis as sole executor, with the testator's brothers Edward and Walter Dennis as overseers together with George Cary of Cockington and four others. He requested in his will that if he should die before its completion his son Sir Thomas Dennis should complete the building work "in consideration of the love he bore him and that he had not disinherited him". He also directed his overseers to complete the work if his son should refuse to do so. Sir Robert did indeed die before the work was finished, and his son Sir Thomas Dennis completed the work in 1594. A "peppercorn" chief rent of one penny per annum was payable by the Livery Dole Hospital to the lord of the manor of Heavitree. [9]
There is not the slightest doubt of this Sir Thomas Dennis having been the testator's son, [10] yet on a seemingly contemporary stone tablet erected over the entrance to the formerly existing quadrangle he was erroneously described as Sir Robert's brother: "These alms-houses were founded by Sir Robert Dennis, knight, in March 1591 and finished by Sir Thomas Dennis his brother (sic) in 1594". The tablet contains also a heraldic escutcheon sculpted in relief showing the following ten quarterings of the Dennis family. [lower-alpha 1] The Dennis almshouses occupy the central part of Livery Dole to the west of the chapel.
In the 17th century the Rolle family of Stevenstone was the heir of the Dennis family of Bicton. Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (1708–1750) left in his will an endowment to "The Hospital of Livery Dole". [13] The almshouses were demolished and rebuilt in 1849 [lower-alpha 2] by Louisa, Lady Rolle (1794–1885), nee Trefusis, daughter of Robert George William Trefusis, 17th Baron Clinton (1764–1797), and widow of John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle (died 1842) of Bicton House. In his will Lord Rolle stipulated that "the patronage of the Livery Dole in Heavitree...shall be in the owner of my mansion house at Bicton", and he had left a life interest in that mansion to his widow. The original almshouses stood at the south-west side of the chapel, but the new buildings were positioned north-west of the chapel, which allowed space for lawns and gardens in front of them. Lady Rolle also rebuilt Bicton Church and Otterton Church. Following Lady Rolle's death in 1885 the patronage descended to Lord Rolle's residuary legatee, his widow's nephew Hon. Mark (Trefusis) Rolle (1836–1907), second son of Charles Trefusis, 19th Baron Clinton.
The windows of St Clarus's Chapel were destroyed by German bombing of Exeter in May 1942 during World War II. [14] The chapel was restored by Mark Rolle's nephew and heir Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton (1863–1957). The east window was rebuilt by him in 1946, and some mediaeval stained glass roundels from a tower in the demolished old Church at Bicton were inserted into the side windows in 1947.
The almshouses were extended in 1980. [15]
At the apex of the Livery Dole triangle, where the two roads meet, was formerly situated a toll house. On that spot since 1885 and still standing today is a Victorian memorial lamp post bearing the inscription: "Charles George Gordon, 26th January 1885". It was erected in memory of General Gordon who was killed in the Siege of Khartoum in 1885, and paid for by Prebendary Barnes, vicar of Heavitree, who was a friend of the General's. [16]
Heavitree is a historic village and former civil parish situated formerly outside the walls of the City of Exeter in Devon, England, and is today an eastern district of that city. It was formerly the first significant village outside the city on the road to London. It was the birthplace of the librarian Thomas Bodley, and the theologian Richard Hooker, and from the 16th century to 1818 was a site for executions within what is now the car park of the St Luke's Campus of the University of Exeter.
John Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle was a British politician and peer who served as a Member of Parliament in general support of William Pitt the Younger and was later an active member of the House of Lords. His violent attacks on Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox in the early 1780s led to his being the target for satirical attack in the Rolliad. He was colonel of the South Devon Militia and was instrumental in forming the Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry and the North Devon Yeomanry.
Baron Rolle was a title created twice in the Peerage of Great Britain for members of the Rolle family, related as uncle and nephew.
Bicton House, or Bickton House, is a late 18th- or early 19th-century country house, which stands on the campus of Bicton College, Bicton, near Exmouth, East Devon. It is a Grade II* listed building. The park and gardens are Grade I listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Agnes Prest was a Cornish Protestant martyr from the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary. She was burned at the stake at Southernhay in Exeter in 1557.
Thomas Benet from Cambridge, was an English Protestant martyr during the reign of King Henry VIII. In 1524, he moved to Torrington, North Devon, with his wife and family so that he could exercise his religious conscience more freely in a county where no one knew him. He was executed by burning on 15 January 1531, for heresy, at Livery Dole outside Exeter in Devon, under the supervision of Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, then Sheriff of Devon.
Gabriel Donne or Dunne was an English Cistercian monk and was the last Abbot of Buckfast Abbey in Devon, before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Holcombe Burnell is a civil parish in the Teignbridge district, in Devon, England, the church of which is about 4 miles west of Exeter City centre. There is no village clustered around the church, rather the nearest village within the parish is Longdown. Only the manor house and two cottages are situated next to the church. The former manor house next to the church is today known as Holcombe Burnell Barton having subsequently been used as a farmhouse. The manor was in the historical Hundred of Wonford. In 2011 the parish had a population of 536.
Hon. Mark George Kerr Rolle, of Stevenstone, St Giles in the Wood, Devon, was High Sheriff of Devon in 1864, a DL of Devon and High Steward of Barnstaple.
Stevenstone is a former manor within the parish of St Giles in the Wood, near Great Torrington, North Devon. It was the chief seat of the Rolle family, one of the most influential and wealthy of Devon families, from c. 1524 until 1907. The Rolle estates as disclosed by the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 comprised 55,592 acres producing an annual gross income of £47,170, and formed the largest estate in Devon, followed by the Duke of Bedford's estate centred on Tavistock comprising 22,607 with an annual gross value of nearly £46,000.
Robert Rolle of Stevenstone, in Devon, was an English landowner and Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1701 and 1710.
Sir Thomas Denys of Holcombe Burnell, near Exeter, Devon, was a prominent lawyer who served as Sheriff of Devon nine times between 1507/8 to 1553/4 and as MP for Devon. He acquired large estates in Devon at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Sir Robert Dennis, JP of Holcombe Burnell in Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Devon in 1555 and served as Sheriff of Devon.
Denys Rolle (1614–1638) of Bicton and Stevenstone in Devon was Sheriff of Devon in 1636. He was one of the biographer John Prince's Worthies of Devon.
John Rolle (1679–1730) of Stevenstone and Bicton in Devon, was a British landowner and Tory politician who sat in the English House of Commons from 1703 to 1705 and in the British House of Commons from 1710 to 1730. He declined the offer of an earldom by Queen Anne, but 18 years after his death his eldest son was raised to the peerage in 1748 by King George II as Baron Rolle.
Hudscott is a historic estate within the parish and former manor of Chittlehampton, Devon. From 1700 it became a seat of a junior branch of the influential Rolle family of Heanton Satchville, Petrockstowe and in 1779 became a secondary seat of the senior Rolle family of Stevenstone, then the largest landowner in Devon. Hudscott House, classified in 1967 a Grade II* listed building, is situated one mile south-east of the village of Chittlehampton. It was largely rebuilt in the 17th century by the Lovering family and in the late 17th century became a refuge for ejected Presbyterial ministers. In 1737 its then occupant Samuel II Rolle (1703-1747) purchased the manor of Chittlehampton and thus Hudscott House became in effect the manor house of Chittlehampton.
The Manor of Otterton was a medieval manor in East Devon, England.
Clinton Devon Estates is a land management and property development company which manages the Devonshire estates belonging to Baron Clinton, the largest private landowner in Devon, England. Lord Clinton is of the Fane-Trefusis family, and is seated at Heanton Satchville in the parish of Huish, in Devon. The organisation's headquarters are situated on part of the estate at the "Rolle Estate Office" in the Bicton Arena at East Budleigh, near Budleigh Salterton, East Devon.
The Manor of Bicton is an historic manor in the parish of Bicton in east Devon, England.
