The heavenly city

The Cathedral Church of St Peter, Exeter, Devon, part I This idiosyncratic masterpiece illuminates the sophistication and personalities behind the development of late-medieval English architecture, as John Goodall explains

- John Goodall

NEARLY 1,000 years ago, in 1050, a priest of the Chapel Royal called Leofric was installed as the first Bishop of Exeter. Little is securely known about his background beyond the fact that he was Brytonicus—British—and probably born in Cornwall. Leofric was educated in Lotharingia and in uncertain circumstances became a chaplain to the future English king, Edward the Confessor, then living in exile in Normandy. When Edward returned to England and ascended to the throne in 1043, he used the institutions of the church as a means of imposing control on the kingdom. Leofric was a beneficiary of this policy and Exeter Cathedral one of its products.

Leofric’s new cathedral replaced two predecessors—in Crediton, Devon, and St Germans, Cornwall—and established his authority in the most important centre of population, administration and trade in the region. Exeter was in origin a legionary fortress established in about AD55 at the lowest crossing of the River Exe. It quickly developed into a regional capital of the territories of the Dumnonii tribe, but, from the 5th century, was seemingly abandoned as a settlement. By about 670, as the area was absorbed Within the Kingdom of Wessex, a Benedictine monastery was founded within the Roman walls and it was here that one Wynfrith—the future St Boniface—was educated.

Then, in the face of the Viking incursions in the 9th century, Exeter became a fortified settlement or burh. Consequently, in 932—a date given by long tradition—the monastery was re-founded on a grander scale by King Aethelstan, who probably rebuilt its church. This stood to the west of the present cathedral and later became a parish church, St Mary Major, since demolished. Leofric appropriated Aethelstan’s church as his new cathedral and replaced its community of monks with a group of 24 priests—termed canons—living communally under the quasi-monastic Rule of St Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (ruled 742-66).