English: No 1 Catherine Street, Exeter. A reflection of the wintry Cathedral Yard is mixed up with internal features of the empty former SPCK bookshop on the corner of Martins Lane (left) and Catherine Street.

An enormously detailed account of the history of the building is at http://www.dc.eclipse.co.uk/spck1.htm , including "the oldest records referring to these buildings date to 1450 ... The Vicars Choral ..., a group of priests of between sixteen and twenty in number whose principal role was to provide singing in the Cathedral ... obtained the property on which they built the houses sometime in the 13th Century."

SPCK operated here from 1961. In October 2006 they were taken over by the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG), since when there have been problems and recriminations. All the staff resigned in October 2007. There is a photo of the shop still carrying stock at 665261. The shop closed in September 2008. Attempts to sell it have also been fraught with difficulty - see http://spckssg.wordpress.com/category/shop-locations/exeter/ . Start at the 30th October 2008 blog entry for an overview of the whole sorry saga. I will watch developments with interest.