Nicholas Orme, formerly Professor of History at the University of Exeter, has written extensively on the history of the medieval Church, education and hospitals in the south west of England. This book, the fruit of thirty years of research, explores the history of the forty-three medieval religious foundations in Exeter. This is a remarkable number even for a provincial capital, but compares with nearly a hundred in Norwich, more in London and twenty-five in Oxford. The quality of the surviving architecture at Exeter does not, however, come up to the standard found in these towns and presumably reflects the comparative paucity of rich patrons. Orme’s book is plentifully supported with maps, but is short on plans of the foundations he describes enthusiastically with so much detail. He doesn’t claim to have studied the remaining fabric of the ecclesiastical structures as ‘lack of time and technology … made it impossible to research and produce the measured and dated plans that are ideally required for each one’. The result is that this is not a guidebook, but an academic work addressed, one feels, to fellow historians. One is left with only a vague impression of the appearance of the medieval city and its churches. In this respect Orme’s book does not come up to the standard set by Warwick Rodwell and exemplified by the latter’s work at Wells and Dorchester.

What does it tell us that is new and unusual? Exeter Minster was founded as early as ad 670 and may well have comprised more than one church in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Its dominance in the city, continued when it became a cathedral, was symbolised by the insistence of the canons to monopolise burial rights in their central cemetery. The large number of clergy ranged from the extremely wealthy pluralist canons to the threadbare priests manning the numerous ill-endowed chantries and chapels and living near the breadline. The number of dedications to Celtic saints in the town suggests that the Roman Church, which accompanied the Anglo-Saxon penetration of Devon and Cornwall, was late on the scene, but did not obliterate the earlier traditions. By 1560 the effects of the Reformation had reduced the number of places of public worship in the town to the cathedral, twenty-one parish churches and two chapels-of-ease. The amazing variety of the high Middle Ages was replaced by a uniform simplicity, which did not reflect the fervour with which its adherents approached their faith.