Timelines of the Exeter paper mills

by John Hall, Paper & Print project research volunteer

As one of the volunteer researchers on the Paper and Print project, I have been working on a timeline of paper mills in Exeter and the surrounding area.

In theory, this is straightforward. How many paper mills were there? Where were they? When were they in business? In practice, it has not been that simple. Mills were known by different names at various times, and this can be a source of confusion. For example, the mill at Silverton was known by at least five different names during its history.

Dates can also be challenging. Documents such as property deeds and insurance policies can provide firm evidence that a mill existed at a given date. But what if our earliest firm evidence for a paper mill at Cullompton comes from the second half of the eighteenth century while there is evidence from marriage records that a paper maker was there in 1729? Does this mean the paper mill existed then or perhaps the bridegroom was working somewhere else? And once we have a start and end date for a paper mill, it shouldn’t be assumed paper was produced continuously during that time. Fires, bankruptcies and other incidents meant that some mills operated very much on a start-stop basis. In 1814, the owner of a paper mill at Exwick was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud relating to a fire in 1809. But that’s another story…