6 . Urban Landscape: Tiverton’s History, Heritage and the Arts
Tiverton’s distinctive history has shaped its townscape and social character. Royal connection, religious fervour and industrial tradition now provide venerable colour, rich texture and a cultural conservatism that values local heritage, culture and talent.
Three Plan projects, the MULTI-PURPOSE P ERFORMING ARTS CENTRE, the TOWN ENHANCEMENT SCHEME and the MERCHANTS’ TRAIL seek to build on this tradition, and to broaden the scope of participation in local heritage and arts groups, to make best use of existing facilities, to provide new facilities where these are lacking and to harness the opportunities offered by the local heritage to develop contemporary creativity.
6 . 1 Conservation, heritage, the arts and tourism
The town centre of Tiverton is a Conservation Area, extending to parts of West Exe including St. Paul’s Church and St. Paul’s Street.
The construction of many of the finest older buildings in the Conservation Area was financed by the proceeds of the woollen industry. The growth and development of the woollen industry from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, is the focus of the ME R C H A N T S TR A I L PR O J E C T, which encourages tourists to explore the town, and provides educational, health and interest benefits for local residents.
The MULTI-PURPOSE PERFORMING ARTS PROJECT seeks to harness the potential of the heritage in the town to
develop high quality facilities for use by local groups, organisations and schools, extending participation in
creative and performing arts in the town. Tiverton High School and the Parochial Church Council of St. Peter’s are interested in co-operating with the Heritage, Arts and Culture Focus Group members in the development of performing arts facilities in the town centre and in hosting arts events. The ARTS WEBSITE PROJECT seeks to bring arts and performing arts events to the attention of a wider local audience, and to encourage greater local participation. Tiverton High School and St. Peters PCC are valued as partners in developing these projects.
6 . 1 . 1 Among the ancient buildings of the area, Tiverton Castle was home to the de Redvers family, Earls of Devon, and the aristocratic Courtenay family, also Earls of Devon, from the Norman conquest to early Tudor times (see 11.2).
6.1.2 St. Peters Church, Grade 1 listed, is a reminder of the influence and importance of religious life during the Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical parish was so large that it was divided into four ‘portions’, whose names are still retained in local place names, Pitt, Tidcombe, Clare and Prior. The Greenway Chapel, an architectural gem, built on the south side of St. Peter’s Church, was a chantry chapel for John Greenway, a local wool merchant, and his wife Joan, constructed a decade before the English Reformation began under Henry VIII. St. Peter’s Church has
traditionally hosted concerts in the town.
6.1.3 St. George’s Church, Tiverton, another Grade 1 listed building, is a visible reminder of the fraught religious strife in the seventeenth century. It was planned to provide a place of worship for religious dissenters, many of whom were fullers and weavers working in the adjacent St. Andrew Street, when strict enforcement of church attendance was planned by parliamentary Act under Queen Anne. It was designed by James Jones of London and built in warm yellow Ham stone in the early eighteenth century. Samuel Wesley, elder brother of John Wesley and headmaster of Blundells School, who was a High Churchman, was buried in the churchyard, as
was Hannah Cowley, playright, and a contemporary of Wesley.
6 . 1 . 4 The National Trust owns Old Blundells School, where the quadrangle at the front of the building is open to the public. The school was founded through the benevolence of a local selfmade wool merchant, Peter Blundell, in 1604. R.D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, was educated there, and set the beginning of his great romance on the quadrangle at the front of the school, known then as the "Ironing Box". The popularity of the story is now an important marketing tool for the tourist industry. Another famous pupil was Frederick
Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury.
6.1.5 The growth of wealth from wool, reflected in the Tiverton town seal and its designation as a borough in 1615, is visible in several other prestigious Tiverton buildings.
• The Elizabethan Waldrons almshouses, and the Jacobian Slee’s almshouses and Great House in St. Peter’s Street reflect the prosperity that the woollen industry brought to the town from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The Greenway almshouses in Gold Street, founded on yet another wool fortune, were rebuilt in stone
after a fire in the eighteenth century. All these buildings are listed.
• Tiverton has retained some of its courtyard housing where weavers and their families toiled together to make a living.
• Later wool merchants built houses along the prestigious streets of the town, Fore Street and St.Peter’s Street. Gotham House and Amory House were two early town houses built in a new material, brick, and are now listed.
The Exe Valley Plan -
