Exeter Discovery Guide
Why Visit Exeter the Smart Way
Exeter is a small New England town with an outsized place in American history and one of the great buildings of twentieth-century architecture.
It was New Hampshire’s revolutionary capital: the provincial congress met here through the war, and in January 1776 the colony adopted the first state constitution written in America, six months before independence was declared.
Phillips Exeter Academy, founded in 1781, is among the most prestigious schools in the United States, and its library by Louis Kahn is a pilgrimage for architects — a brick cube around a central hall where enormous circular openings reveal the stacks.
The town itself is a handsome one: a bandstand at the crossroads, a river running over a fall, brick and clapboard streets, and good bookshops and restaurants.
How to Experience Exeter
The Kahn library
Phillips Exeter Academy Library, finished in 1972, is the reason architects come to New Hampshire. From outside it is a restrained brick cube; inside, a central hall rises the full height with four vast circular openings cut through the concrete, revealing the book stacks around it, lit from clerestories above. Carrels sit at the perimeter, each with its own window and a sliding shutter. It is widely considered among the finest libraries built in the twentieth century.
American Independence Museum
In the Ladd-Gilman House, the state treasury during the revolution, with one of the surviving original printings of the Declaration of Independence and an early draft of the Constitution among its holdings.
The town
The bandstand at the junction of Water and Front Streets, the falls where the Exeter River meets the tide, the swing bridge, and Swasey Parkway along the river.
Water Street
Independent shops, a bookshop of long standing and a restored cinema.
Nearby
Portsmouth and its colonial waterfront, twenty minutes north-east, and the short New Hampshire seacoast.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
Exeter is a prosperous, literate New England town that takes its history and its school seriously.
The academy
Phillips Exeter shapes the town’s character more than its size suggests: about a thousand pupils and several hundred staff, a substantial endowment, and a teaching method — the Harkness table, where twelve students and a teacher discuss around an oval table with no lectures — that has been copied worldwide. The campus is woven into the town rather than walled off from it, and the town’s bookshops, lectures and concerts reflect that.
Revolutionary memory
New Hampshire was the first colony to establish an independent government, and Exeter is where it happened. The town leans into this with a serious annual festival and a museum, and local historical knowledge runs deep.
New England town meeting
Exeter still governs itself by town meeting and an elected board, which is a live civic institution here rather than a curiosity.
Seacoast New Hampshire
The state’s south-eastern corner is its most densely settled and least rural, within commuting distance of Boston.
Responsible Travel Tips
Phillips Exeter is a working school. The campus is open and the library can usually be visited, but students live and study there. Check the visiting arrangements before arriving, keep to the public areas, and do not photograph pupils.
Spend on Water Street. Exeter has kept an unusually complete independent main street — a long-established bookshop, a cinema, cafes and shops — in a region where most towns lost theirs to the retail strips on the highway.
The Squamscott River is tidal here and its estuary is an important habitat; the Great Bay reserve downstream is fragile salt marsh and eelgrass. Stay on boardwalks and keep dogs under control.
Parking in the centre is limited and residential streets are not overflow parking; use the municipal lots.
When to Visit Exeter
Late September to mid-October is the best time: autumn colour across New England, clear warm days and cold nights, and the town at its most attractive.
May and June are green, mild and quiet, before the summer visitors arrive on the coast.
Mid-July brings the American Independence Festival, the town’s own event, with reenactors and a reading of the Declaration from the bandstand.
July and August are warm and humid, and the nearby beaches are busy; Exeter itself stays manageable.
December to March is cold with substantial snow, and the town looks its best under it; the school term shapes the local rhythm.
April is mud season — grey, wet and the one month New Englanders will tell you to skip.
Travel Cost Levels in Exeter
What a day costs, by how you travel
Relative cost across the city
Lowest — the chain accommodation along the state routes and toward Epping
Average — the town centre and the surrounding villages
Highest — graduation and parents’ weekends at the academy, and the seacoast in July and August
New Hampshire has no sales tax and no income tax, which is a genuine and noticeable saving on shopping, though a meals and rooms tax applies to restaurants and accommodation. Tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected.
