Sampler

The surname of the teenage maker of this sampler is confusingly like the name of the school where she is thought to have made it. Hele’s School on Hele Road, Exeter is now the site of Exeter College. Elize Hele (1560-1635) had left money for ‘public purposes’ in 1632, but his wishes were not carried out for nearly another 200 years. The fund he had provided was revived in 1837 by new trustees with the idea of building a school. The school was built in 1849 and opened in 1850. Jane Heal worked her sampler in 1867 when she was 13. Perhaps she was a pupil teacher who stayed on to help the schoolmistress teach the younger children. Jane depicted a building with railings at the bottom edge of her sampler. The building is assumed to be Hele School, and like the alphabet, numbers and motifs, is worked in cross-stitch. However, Jane, aged 6, appears on the 1861 census with her family, living at 50 Hele Square Bradninch. The local schoolmistress, Caroline Lyne, lived in the same area at 43 Hele Square, and this may be the building shown in Jane’s sampler.