400 Years of shopkeeping in Exeter.

Photo of old books The present SPCK Bookshop premises in Catherine Street, Exeter, Devon have been used for a great variety of commercial activity since the Reformation when the Vicars Choral stopped using them for residential purposes.

The separate houses of 1 and 2 Catherine Street were adapted to secular use with small shops and kitchens on the ground floor and the upper floors being used for residential purposes of the families running the shops.

The houses were leased to Hugh Pomeroy and John Prowz in 1566 and to the Wyotts from 1591 to 1632. These Devonshire gentry did not use them themselves but subleased them to craftsmen and traders. It is not known who these tenants were at that time.

It becomes clearer in the 17th Century. Number 2 was occupied by Stephen Toller, a haberdasher from 1664 to 1695 and thereafter by Robert Chafe, shoemaker until 1720. Another house, and it is not certain if it is number 1 or number 3 or 4, which were still standing at that time, was occupied by George Stoning a druggist in the early 18th Century and later by a leather seller named Thomas Babbadge.

There is a gap in the records here but in 1838, number 1 on the corner of St Martins Lane and Catherine St was occupied by Charles Warren, boot and shoemaker and number 2 by George Rippon a tailor.

The properties were sold in 1871 to H H Sanders but continued to be occupied by small traders. Number 1 was occupied by a hairdresser AND an umbrella maker in 1878. Perhaps this interesting combination didn't work out as in 1890 there is record of there having been a hairdresser and a tobacconist in occupation. Presumably by this stage the upper floors were no longer being used for residential purposes, but for one or other of the shops. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Martin's second-hand bookshop was using the premises to be briefly replaced by a antique dealer around about the time of World War 1. Shaplands, the Cathedral Art Gallery then took over and remained there for over 30 years.

The smaller house of number 2 Catherine Street was occupied by a tailor in the mid nineteenth century and in the 1870's by William Evins, shoemaker, and Thomas Evins, portmanteau maker. By 1890 the shop was occupied by a "German yeast dealer", now a vanished occupation, and later by a watchmaker. By 1919, Perriams the bootmakers were in occupation where they stayed for nearly 40 years. By 1960 the Cathedral Art Gallery had taken over both properties, when presumably the first oak screen was first cut through.

Four Hundred Years of Shopkeeping.

In 1961 SPCK purchased the property, and converted it into a Bookshop.