EDGT receives donation from Western Union of Unitarians

“Saints’ Rest” – the Dissenters’ graveyard located in Magdalen Street - closed its gates to new burials 164 years ago.

More recently it has been the subject of a four-year restoration project carried out by volunteers of the Exeter Dissenters’ Graveyard Trust (EDGT).

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the graveyard was the final resting place for members of Exeter’s Unitarian congregation who worshipped at George’s Meeting House in South Street – now a public house owned by JD Wetherspoons.

Although there is no longer an active Unitarian Meeting Place in Exeter, the Western Union of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches (WU) has keenly followed the progress of the work, and their Council members agreed to award a grant to EDGT to help fund further restoration.

WU’s former President Martin Fieldhouse said, “The work undertaken by EDGT is most commendable, and whilst we do not usually provide grants to burial grounds this project has revealed fascinating insights into the lives of Exeter’s Unitarian and Presbyterian congregations from the mid-1700s”.

Current Unitarians meet regularly elsewhere in Devon in their chapels in Cullompton, Sidmouth, Torquay, and Plymouth, and annually in Moretonhampstead.