oldexeterinnEvil on the High Roads and at the Old Exeter Inn!
On 23rd October, 1779, Captain George Mckinley of the Light Dragoons had his eye on the Old Exeter Inn at the heart of the Dartmoor Town of Ashburton. Not for a pint of ale to be drunk beside a warming fire on an Autumn night. Something evil was within, and he was determined to root it out.
“Heinous Acts of Violence upon Innocent Travellers” had been committed on the High Roads between Ashburton and Bovey Tracey in the County of Devonshire. A certain Bartholomew Poultney, also known as ‘Black Mob’, was behind the robberies. He was in business with the landlord of Old Exeter Inn, and their ill-gotten gains were ‘secreted away in ingenious hiding places within the fabric of the house – namely the Exeter Inn Hostelry’.
Captain Mckinley sought the permission of the shire-reeve (later known as a sheriff) to place a ‘watch’ on the Exeter to apprehend the culprits. It worked! Black Mob discovered that crime never pays. His Sentence: To be hanged by the neck until dead.
This story brings to mind that of the vile Joss Merlyn in Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, the landlord who led a group of cutthroat wreckers and smugglers hiding their valuable spoils inside his inn. There is no record of what became of our Mr Merlyn at the Exeter Inn, but the current landlord can report that absolutely no valuables have been discovered anywhere in his inn today!
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