An early electric tram on Exe Bridge
John Perkin Collection
Dunsford Gate Terminus
Exeter Civic Society
The Mayor opens the Alphington Road service in 1906
John Perkin Collection
Tram 'Specials' waiting at Stone Lane
John Perkin Collection
By Julia Neville
After the railway arrived at St David’s Station on 1 May 1844, Exeter began to grow again as a hub for the distribution of goods and provision of services to the countryside around and to the far South West. New jobs meant extra people, and in the last quarter of the nineteenth century a building boom began, west of the Exe as well as on Exeter’s eastern fringe.
Though Exeter’s eastern suburbs were linked by horse-drawn tram to the city centre as early as 1882, the Exeter Tramways Company were not allowed to run trams down the High Street to the Exe. It was not till the Corporation decided to take on the trams and to provide a new electrified service that the public transport service was extended west of the Exe, across the new Exe Bridge. Exe Bridge opened on 29 March 1905 and was almost immediately followed by the opening of the new tram service, inaugurated by Mayor E.C. Perry on 4th April 1905.
The first tram route across the Exe, the through route from Heavitree up Cowick Street to Dunsford Gate, opened as part of that initial phase. The terminus was at the Falmouth Inn (more recently the First and Last) where the old gate for the turnpike had stood. Later it was pictured by a local artist in a painting given to the Civic Society by Sylvia Harding.
On 29 September 1906 Mayor Tom Linscott opened the second tram route across the Exe, the service which ran from the Pinhoe Road over Exe Bridge and along Alphington Street. This second through route ran down along the embankment and out under the railway bridge as far as Stone Lane, Alphington Road. This was a useful terminus where the ‘specials’ to transport fans attending events at the County Ground could wait.
The trams went on, through peace and war, until the rise of the motor car, the motor van and the delivery lorry created major congestion all along the High Street and at the Exe Bridge. On 19th August 1931 the trams were replaced by the more flexible motor bus and the fleet was sold on elsewhere. One Exeter tram, cut down to single deck size, is still preserved in the Seaton Tramway collection.
You can read more about the trams in Exeter and the Trams, 1882-1931 by Julia Neville, published by Exeter Civic Society. Available from local booksellers, tourist information offices (£11.99) or by post from http://www.exetercivicsociety.org.uk/Publications.html