Underground Passages Detailed History of Exeter's Underground Passages A visit to Exeter's Underground Passages is a most unusual event and one of the most exciting things available for young people in the City of Exeter. The passages welcome bookings from schools, student groups, clubs and societies. Guides at the passages regularly receive letters, stories and pictures from school children who have enjoyed their visits. Dating from 14th century, these medieval passages under Exeter High Street are a unique ancient monument: no similar system of passages can be explored by the public elsewhere in Britain. They were built to house the pipes that brought fresh water to the city. Visitors to the Underground Interpretation Centre pass through an exhibition and video presentation before their guided tour. Exeter's Underground Passages have long exercised a fascination over local people, bringing stories of buried treasure, secret escape routes, passages for nuns and priests - even a ghost on a bicycle. Their purpose was simple: to bring clean drinking water from natural springs in fields lying outside the walled city, through lead pipes into the heart of the city. The pipes sometimes sprang leaks and repairs to buried pipes could only be carried out by digging them up as we do today. To avoid this disruption the passages were vaulted and it is down some of these vaulted passageways that visitors are guided. A booklet about Exeter's Underground Passages available from the Underground Passages shop and the shop in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

Introduction to the Underground Passages of Exeter

Exeter’s Underground Passages are a unique ancient monument: no similar system of passages can be explored by the public elsewhere in Britain.

They have long exercised a fascination over local people, bringing stories of buried treasure, secret escape routes, passages for nuns and priests – even a ghost on a bicycle. In fact their purpose was simple: to bring clean drinking water from natural springs in fields lying outside the walled city in the parish of St Sidwell’s, through lead pipes, into the heart of the city. They bear testimony to bold medieval engineering, modified and extended in later centuries.

The Wells Underlying the area of St Sidwell’s are bands of porous sandstone – the Whipton Beds. These once acted as an aquifer; rain falling on the nearby hills in the area now occupied by the suburbs of Pennsylvania and Stoke Hill seeped along the beds, welling up in the area of the modern Exeter City Football Ground and adjacent Well Street. Two major wells were used to supply the city. The cathedral authorities first used one known as St Sidwell’s Well, close to the modern St Sidwell’s School; it is no longer visible. The site of the citizens’ principal well, called Headwell, can still be seen in the railway cutting close to St James Halt. Here they built a little stone well-house over the spring; it stood until its demolition to make way for the Exeter-Waterloo railway in 1857-8.

These pages are reproduced from the Exeter City Council publication " Exeter's Underground Passages" by John Allan of Exeter City Museums Service. ISBN 1-85522-327-9. © Exeter City Council 1999.

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