Mount Radford

In 1570 a wealthy Exonian lawyer named Lawrence Radford ‘did build him a fayre house and called it Mount Radford’ at the end of what would become St Leonards Road. He named the house Radford Place. During the Civil War the house was fortified, along with many other properties around Exeter. In common with some other fortified houses it had Mount added to its name to become Mount Radford.

John Baring of Larkbeare House become a wealthy trader in Exeter woollen cloth. His youngest son founded Barings Bank in London, with his eldest brother John. John, remained in Exeter, in partnership with his middle brother Charles, as a woollen mercant. He purchased Mount Radford House and 17 acres of land for 2,000 guineas from the bankrupt John Colesworthy in 1755. The, by now, old medieval Mount Radford House was transformed into a grand Georgian mansion approached by a cedar tree lined drive, which ran from Magdalen Road to the house; it would later became St Leonards Road. Baring also moved Topsham Road forty feet away from the house, towards St Leonards Church and constructed a footbridge to the church from his grounds.

This was a house fit for a man of substance, and John rapidly left his brothers to run the two family businesses, and ran for Parliament to become an MP for Exeter from 1776. He died in 1816.

In the 1820's there was a building boom in Exeter and Sir Thomas Baring, John's son, sold off large tracts of land for development, including the land that would become Baring Crescent. The family vacated the house in 1826 when it became Mount Radford College. The college closed in 1902 and was demolished to make way for the development of Barnardo Road and Cedars Road. 

Sometime later, the whole area was renamed Mount Radford, after the house. The grounds of the house are now a primary school.