The Form & Growth of the City

In 1900 Exeter still occupied about less than a third of the area of the modern built-up city. The growth has reflected a number of major social changes. Parts of the city centre, most famously the West Quarter, remained places of very serious poverty and disease until public housing schemes finally cleared them in the 1920s and 30s, building new estates on the outskirts of the city. Suburban growth, swallowing up the old villages of Alphington, Exwick, Whipton, Heavitree and Pinhoe, has followed.

Even after the First World War many of Exeter’s industries were still packed into the old decaying areas at the city centre, beside the river. Their removal, allied with industrial expansion, lay behind the creation of industrial estates at Marsh Barton and Sowton.

Another theme has been the renewal of the city centre. Following the extensive bomb damage of 1942 much of the city was rebuilt in fairly uniform post-war style. Major city centre projects followed in the 1970s and subsequently, some responding to the needs of modern shoppers, others among to make more attractive the remaining historic parts of the city.