St Peter's Statue - St Peter's Corner

This carved statue of St Peter holding a church and the keys of heaven while trampling the Devil, once stood on the corner of 187 High Street and North Street, in a niche over the window of Holman Ham the Chemist. The location is still referred to as 'St Peter's Corner'. The building had previously housed the West of England Fire Insurance Company between 1809 and 1821 and had been occupied by Holman Ham from at least 1830. When the building was replaced, in 1892 for J Hepworth and Son, the statue was moved from the corner to an elaborate niche and platform over the front of the new shop in the High Street.

It is thought that the figure dates from the late 15th or early 16th-century. Carved from oak, it is not typical of local work, nor of English carving. The museum speculates that it may have been carved locally by an immigrant artisan from Germany or the Low Countries. It is also possible that it is French in origin where similar figures can be found on house façades, especially around Morlaix in Brittany. There are records of a French immigrant community, in Exeter from when it was carved.

The figure was removed from its position in the High Street, in 1986, to the museum where it has been carefully conserved. Decayed wood has been consolidated in resin and the whole painted in colours that are thought to be representative of the style at the time of its carving. The Devil was replaced at the end of the 19th-century.

There was a plan to place the statue back on its niche at 187, but it is considered to be too fragile. The new laser technology to scan the statue in three dimensions and then to build a life size replica using a computer controlled prototype modeling machine was considered. The statue would have to be sent to Liverpool for laser scanning, and the total cost was to be about £20,000, a sum thought to be excessive for the recessionary times of 2010.

A similar figure was once placed over the entrance of the Broadgate, facing the Cathedral. Whether there is any connection between the two is unknown.