Channel 4 Devon & Cornwall Filming at the Old Exeter Inn

As seen on TV

Back in October 2020, Channel 4 came to the Old Exeter Inn to film for their hugely successful Devon & Cornwall series. The show follows the lives of ordinary people in the beautiful South West – fishermen, farmers, and folk running their own little enterprises.

This time it was the turn of very talented traditional signwriter Josh Monk. And where better to capture the craft than England’s oldest freehouse?

The Mural

We commissioned Josh to paint a mural on the front of the building – the life and adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh, no less. With the help of a true friend of ours, the wonderfully talented artist Phil Game, we pieced together the best-known elements of Sir Walter’s story. The artists began sketching them out on A3 paper.

Then the cameras rolled. Channel 4 followed Josh to his workshop near Chagford to film the final design taking shape. From there, to the Old Exeter Inn, where Josh set to work on a scaffold tower in bitterly cold conditions, bringing Sir Walter Raleigh back to life.

417 years after his last drink at the pub. The day he was arrested for Treason.

That wasn’t a good day, Walter.

A Very Good Day for Josh and David

But it was a very good day for Josh and David Hattersley, the owner of the Old Exeter Inn. Four days of filming, in fact – inside and outside the building – for a fifteen-minute feature.

Devon & Cornwall is one of Channel 4’s most-watched programmes, with audiences regularly topping four million. The publicity for the Old Exeter and Ashburton was remarkable. Six years on, people still come to the town because of it.

Phase One Complete

Phase two, to colour in the mural and paint the front of the building was completed five years later, in 2025.

Look Carefully at the Artwork!

If you look carefully at the mural, you will see the elements we created (plus our fat old cat, Witherington, that we had to include). See if you can identify them and work out their meaning! The answers are below in small writing so you don’t cheat! Good luck.

Potatoes. Tobacco. Gold. Writing. Sir Francis Drake’s ship. Sheep (Wool was a major business in Ashburton at the time). Tin mine (another big Dartmoor industry). Sea and his own ship (exploration). Skull (he was beheaded and his wife kept his head in a bag with her for the rest of her life). Witherington the Cat. Latin phrase chosen by the owner ‘Alea iacta est’, meaning the Die is Cast (no going back when you’ve crossed the Rubicon) – Julius Caesar 48BC – or in this case there is no going back when you have been mad enough to buy a pub

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