Customs House

Exeter was a bustling port specialising in the wool trade starting in the Tudor period, hence the dockside customs house. The canal and lock systems were finalised at that time, returning Exeter to trading prominence. In fact Exeter had been a very succesful trading hub about five hundred years earlier, until an angry countess blocked off the city's access to the River Exe. There is still an area, now within Exeter proper, called Countesswear (Countess's 'weir' or dam) remebering this.