762 listed buildings, 22 of them Grade I

Rougemont CastleGrade I listedGeorge's ChapelGrade I listedBomb damaged remains of St Catherine's Almshouses and chapel and adjacent canon's house, 140m north of the CathedralScheduled monumentNorth Warehouse (Occupied by the Exeter Maritime Museum)Grade II listedThe Horse and Groom Public HouseGrade II listed+103See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

1744

1880

c. 1890

c. 1890

1903

1920

1943

c. 1946

1947

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

Fore Street24 listed

High Street24 listed · 5 II*

St Leonard's Road20 listed

Church Road14 listed

Magdalen Road12 listed · 2 II*

Cathedral Close11 listed · 3 Grade I · 5 II*

Lower North Street10 listed

St Davids Hill10 listed

Lyndhurst Road9 listed

Queen Street9 listed

West Street9 listed · 1 II*

Cowick Street8 listed

Cathedral Close holds 11 entries, 3 of them Grade I: more of the top grade than any other street. Of the 762 entries, 388 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 10 entries were listed in 1952. 409 came in 1974, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 8 have been added in the last 15 years.

16 scheduled monuments

Nationally important archaeological sites and monuments, protected by law; work on them needs consent from the Secretary of State, advised by Historic England.

WartimeBomb damaged remains of St Catherine's Almshouses and chapel and adjacent canon's house, 140m north of the Cathedral

Danes Castle

Hall of the Vicars Choral, South Street

Ide Bridge

Law Library, Cathedral Yard

Little John's Cross

MedievalMedieval bridge and part of a late medieval conduit under Holloway Street

RomanPart of the Roman town of Exeter, beneath Cathedral Green

RomanRoman baths (site of), The Deanery

RomanRoman, Anglo Saxon and medieval defences called collectively Exeter City Walls

Rougemont Castle

St Katherine's Priory, Polsloe

St Loye's Chapel and cross, Rifford Road

St Nicholas' Priory

MedievalThe medieval Exe Bridge, St Edmund's Church, and medieval tenement remains, lying between the River Exe and Frog Street

Underground passages

3 registered parks and gardens

Larkbeare HouseGrade II

Northernhay and Rougemont GardensGrade II

St Bartholomew's Cemetery, ExeterGrade II*

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

Baldwin of Forde

Nicholas Hilliard

Richard Hooker

Matthew Locke

Henrietta of England

Francis Hayman

James Holman

John Bowring

Mary Carpenter

William Francis Ainsworth

William Benjamin Carpenter

Lilly Martin Spencer

Henry Chadwick

Alfred Merle Norman

Sabine Baring-Gould

William Kingdon Clifford

Fred Karno

Christabel Marshall

Irene Vanbrugh

William Temple

120013501500165018001950

William Kingdon Clifford1845–1879 · English mathematician and philosopher

Henrietta of England1644–1670 · English princess, duchesse of Orléans (1644-1670)

John Bowring1792–1872 · 4th Governor of Hong Kong; hymnwriter; translator (1792-1872)

Nicholas Hilliard1547–1619 · British artist (1547-1619)

Richard Hooker1554–1600 · English bishop and Anglican Divine

Sabine Baring-Gould1834–1924 · English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist, eclectic scholar, folk s…

Mary Carpenter1807–1877 · English educationist and social reformer (1807–1877)

Matthew Locke1621–1677 · English Baroque composer

Everyone born in Exeter → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

Exeter has 762 listed buildings, 22 of them Grade I. For its size, it has more listed heritage than 81% of UK towns. Exeter Cathedral sits at the heart of it all, with 15 of the town’s Grade I buildings within 400 m. Only 9 of the 87 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings.

Fore Street alone has 24 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 19 conservation areas, the first designated in 1968. Of the whole list, 73% are houses, terraces and villas. Beyond that, 20% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.