INTRODUCTION

In 1975 and 1995–6 John Thorp and Richard Parker of Exeter Museums Archaeological Field Unit made careful drawn and photographic records of the extraordinary limeplaster ceiling of 144 Fore Street, Exeter. The ceiling's major features are two oval tablesettings, one of fish, the other of fruit, each within a floral border surrounded by real and fabulous animals. Their design appears to be a unique depiction of a 17th-century English table-setting. This paper will discuss the culinary aspects of the various elements of the scheme and their bearing on the date and interpretation of the plasterwork.

No. 144 Fore Street is a house which occupies a long narrow tenement in one of Exeter's principal streets; it dates mainly from the late 17th century (Fig. 15.1). Reconstruction of the tenement history of the property by A.G. Collings showed that it had been owned and occupied from the 1630s to the late 1690s by the Somers family, leading figures in the city's important fulling trade; one of the family, Thomas Somers, was elected Master of the Company of Weavers, Fullers and Shearmen, the principal guild of Exeter's cloth industry, in 1695.

The principal element of the property is a block three storeys high and two rooms deep, standing on the street frontage; to the rear stood two ancillary buildings separated by two small courtyards.