Just before we went on holiday to Dorset/Devon I had been reading one of the Crowner John Mysteries by Professor Bernard Knight.  I have to admit that they have been a bit of a struggle. The novels are full of historical detail not least about what the first Crowners (Coroners) did and might have solved murders.The novels are sent in the reign of King Richard when the role was introduced. Professor Knight was himself a pathologist and, as the blurb says, conducted over 25,000 autopsies.

The trouble is that after a couple of novels the characters and their relationships all fall into a patten which is predictable, and gets rather dull. There was brief respite in one of the books when the action moved to London, but then it was back to Exeter and Devon.

As I knew we were going to Exeter I took a copy of the map from the book (see below). The Cathedral was not hard to find! It took me a while to work out other places but I did find where Crowner John’s house would have been in the 1190s, if he had existed. It is marked as “John’s House” on the map just off the High Street going down towards St Martin’s church and the Cathedral Close.

 I presume none of the buildings I photographed are from that era. Though, the Tudor looking ones would have been a couple of centuries later and may have been built on earlier ones.

Visited 30 June 2026