This is episode 2 of our Heritage Harbours short series, celebrating the Heritage Harbour initiative which seeks to protect and revive historic ports, docks, canals and waterfronts that still retain a genuine working maritime character.
For this episode we've travelled to Exeter one of Britain's most remarkable maritime cities. It may sit miles from the open sea, but for almost a thousand years its fortunes have been shaped by ships, merchants, engineers and the River Exe. .
Exeter began life as the Roman settlement of Isca Dumnoniorum around AD 50. The River Exe connected the settlement with the coast and provided an important transport route inland. But Exeter's real maritime success came in the medieval period, when it became one of England's wealthiest provincial cities through the export of Devon wool and fine cloth to Europe. Merchants imported wine, salt, timber and luxury goods, while busy quays, warehouses and customs houses transformed the waterfront into the commercial heart of the city.
Yet Exeter's prosperity depended on one thing: access to the sea. Over time weirs built for fishing and mills made the River Exe increasingly difficult to navigate. By the sixteenth century larger vessels could no longer reach the city. Exeter faced losing the very trade that had made it prosperous.
Instead of accepting decline, the city fought back. In 1566—when Elizabeth I had been on the throne for less than a decade—Exeter opened one of England's earliest engineered ship canals. It was a remarkable feat of engineering that restored access to the sea and transformed the city's fortunes for another three centuries. The canal was later enlarged to accommodate larger ships and remains the oldest pound-lock canal in Britain still in use today.
","author_name":"The Society for Nautical Research and the Lloyds Register Foundation"}