Uncovering the History of the Exeter Guildhall Site –
for the 50th anniversary of the Guildhall Shopping Centre
By Nigel Sadler
Tuesday 11 August 19:30 at Matthews Hall
Entrance £6 payable at the door. Doors open at 7:00pm.
A bar will be available offering alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments.
In 2026 the Exeter Guildhall Shopping Centre celebrated its 50th anniversary. To mark this occasion they employed Sands of Time Consultancy (owned by Nigel Sadler) to research the history of the area, and the development of the shopping centre to create an 18 panel exhibition.
This talk will look at the process of the research undertaken and the history of the area it revealed. It illustrates how old buildings such as the Guildhall and St Pancras Church were incorporated into the development and how the shopping centre grew to become a major focus of evening life in Exeter.
Nigel Sadler began his career in 1986 as a field archaeologist, working in the Near East for 2 years. He then worked for 2 years in Britain before qualifying as a museum professional. He worked for an independent and then local authority museum in London before becoming Director of the Turks and Caicos National Museum in the Caribbean where he lived 2000-2006. In 2007 he set up Sands of Time Consultancy and returned to the UK to work on several major exhibitions as part of the bicentenary of the end of the British Slave Trade. 2008-2010 he worked as a Museum Development officer in London advising and supporting around 90 museums in the centre of London, before his wife’s job brought them down to Devon. He went back to consultancy work in 2011 and worked for the Museums Association of the Caribbean, Cayman Islands National Museum and Montserrat National Trust, as well as several projects in the UK.
In 2017 he was employed by Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery to be the lead curator on the port of Plymouth gallery for their new ‘Box’ Development. He stayed in the post until mid-2018 when he was employed by Axminster Heritage Centre to lead on the content development of their new exhibition. He has since remained the part-time Manager at Axminster. He is also the volunteer Museum Curator at Ottery Museum, the town where he lives. He has led on the development of the content of the museum for its reopening after COVID.
Nigel is also a published author. This includes several academic publications related to the search and discovery of a sunken slave ship, and several books on slavery and its legacy. He has also used postcards to write books on the History of British Museums, History of British Piers, The First World War and The British West Indies. He has also written two books on the history of Ottery St Mary.