Around Heavitree

Due to a fuel crisis, I left the Renault in the place where I usually park for work: the City Trading Estate. This is a small, superb new trading estate just off the Sidmouth Road, near the M5 at Sandygate. It is at the eastern end of the ancient Quarry Lane, which ran all the way from Heavitree and Wonford down to Bishops Court quarry which itself dates back several hundred years and is still operational today. Its fine red dust peppers the entire area; its insatiable appetite for red sandstone has allowed the creation of the Bishops Court Industrial Estate.

The City Trading Estate has about ten large, corrugated steel clad warehouses, the type favoured by such modern retailers as Original Style Ltd, a specialist in ceramic tiles and interior design. Indeed, they are so trendy that they were honoured two years ago by a visit from Tony Blair, the infamous war criminal. They have a notice board near the front door with pictures and newspaper cuttings of his visit. However, I think he called in because it is only two hundred yards from the M5 and he couldn’t be bothered to visit Exeter city centre.

The estate is built on an incline, leading up to Apple Lane footpath, another old lane which leads over the single track Exmouth branch line to the former lunatic asylum of Digby. In Victorian times – R Stark Wilkinson, 1886 - this vast building would have been a rural sanctuary, set out in the countryside of East Devon with no motorways, no railway lines, no distractions whatsoever; a haven of tranquillity for its depressed souls.

It has now been sold off, converted into flats and joined by hundreds of new houses, all forming a vast new estate. There are some interesting apartments in the old hospital, particularly those corners of the old towers; you might call it 'quadruple aspect', in estate agency parlance. Alas, there are hundreds more on the way, too, at Southam Fields, nearby; the former Southam Farm and its fine buildings have simply vanished.

Is Exeter to become a vast new metropolis?

This is just about the eastern limit of Exeter City Council before the M5 and East Devon District Council. So the new rugby stadium at Sandy Park, three hundred yards away over the A379, on the western banks of the M5, is only just within the city limits.

As usual, from the plans in the Express & Echo, the stadium will be hemmed in on two sides by roads - it is to be built in the very armpit of the M5 and the A379, two very busy roads - allowing no room for expansion whatsoever should the club become successful at a national level.

It has all been marketed as a £50 million scheme yet the stadium will entertain a paltry 8,000 spectators, some housed in a tiny grandstand. Typical. Where is the ambition? Where is the vision? What will they name it? The M5 Stadium? The M5/A379 Armpit Stadium?

Really, the whole scheme is a £2 million stadium combined with a £20 million tennis/David Lloyd Centre (for the wealthy, £100 a month/corporate brigade) and £28 million of houses, to be built on the site of the old County Ground in St Thomas. It is a joke!

If the city planners had any intelligence at all - whatsoever! - they would place the Exeter Falcons speedway stadium by the M5 (it is a noisy motorway, after all!) where there would be no complaints whatsoever over noisy speedway. Then the rugby club could go to Westpoint instead. How's that for a solution? Either way, one of the two clubs must leave the city; since the rugby club initiated the whole scheme, let them leave the city and head off to Westpoint and East Devon.

At any rate, Apple Lane is surely destined to become one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole of Exeter, a far cry from its Victorian days as a tiny, rural footpath leading to... Sowton village? Similarly, the residents of Baxter Close and Clyst Halt Avenue - en route to the stadium from Digby and Sowton halt on the Exmouth line - are about to enjoy some very busy Saturday afternoons!

At the Rydon Lane end of Quarry Lane, yet more beautiful meadows have been given over to modern housing, their new roads and closes taking shape just like a short session of Sim City 3000. How long before Exeter’s population reaches 150,000? Ten years? Another five hundred flats are underway in the city centre (Isca Place and Princesshay and assorted other places).

Wingfield Park, the home of Heavitree United Football Club, is on the crest of a hill just off the main road, at 2 East Wonford Hill. Only its clubhouse – the Knoll, formerly Park Villa – is visible from the main road. This is a large, cream, Georgian house on top of a hill and there is no sign at all of a football pitch. There is not much to recommend further investigation. As a fan, however, of football grounds of all sizes and descriptions, I take note of the club notice by the main road, its list of upcoming fixtures, and decide to walk up the short driveway for the first time. There must be a football pitch hidden away somewhere.

Refreshingly, the scene at the summit is idyllic! Behind the tennis courts - there must be at least eight - you wonder where on earth the football pitch can be for this looks like a tennis club. But the ground rises still further and there is no other place to look.

Sure enough, past the tennis courts, you come, through a line of hedges, to a wire gate bearing a notice: £1 admission, includes programme. And there, in the distance and through the gate, is a large tract of open land: a football pitch. On the right is a grandstand, tiny but large enough to incorporate a large awning proudly stating: HEAVITREE UNITED FOOTBALL CLUB.

This is what I call ‘real football’, even more real than that available at St James Park, two miles away. God knows what league Heavitree United are now in, but I can easily imagine watching an FA Cup match here in September – at the most preliminary stage imaginable – and admiring the simple essence of non-league football and the Haldon Hills in the distance. After the match, you can retire to the social club for a friendly pint.

Wingfield Park has a large football pitch, all neatly surrounded by a small fence painted a brilliant white, all in the most careful manner. The main entrance to the ground proper is a mere three yards from the goal-line; there is no terracing at all and the 'grandstand' has about fifty seats. The goal area is worn away and there is a modest wall around the perimeter, enough to keep out any non-paying fans but not the view of the 1940s houses that surround this delightful football ground. It reminds me of Underhill, the home of Barnet Football Club, but without the slope.

I imagine the biggest derby match at this ground would be a visit from Clyst Rovers Football Club, another gem set at the end of a runway at Exeter International Airport.

It also reminds me that Heavitree Park is next door – a collection of very expensive Georgian villas - and that Wingfield Park is therefore a goldmine, probably at least £1 million of prime residential property estate. Who owns it and will it survive?

I head on into town via Fore Street, Heavitree, past the Blessed Sacrament church for Catholics, past St Loyes. The gate to St Loyes is open so I take the opportunity of looking inside for the first time ever; it has an enormous quadrangle inside, just like a barracks, yet a fine place to sit in the spring.



LINKS
Heavitree Social Centre (Heavitree United Football Club social club):
http://www.clubsline.com/social/heavi.html
Contains a picture of the place from the main road and some details of facilities and history of the place.

Exeter Chiefs Rugby Club and the Sandy Park, mickey mouse development:
http://www.exeterchiefs.com/?Page=32
This page has an aerial photo of the proposed stadium development, showing the pitch/stadium itself totally hemmed in at the corner of the M5 and the A379. Pathetic!

Catholic Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Heavitree (Exeter and East Devon Diocese):
http://www.plymouth-diocese.org.uk/parishes/exeter&devon/heavitree.htm

References:
3/Heavitree – Trevor Falla, Discovering Exeter series.
This is Part 3 of the superb Discovering Exeter series, in association with Exeter Civic Society, nine small but detailed books on different areas of Exeter. They contain superb descriptions of different areas and many interesting maps and photographs.