Walter Gervais

1218) of the City of Exeter in Devon, England, was a wealthy merchant who served several times as Mayor of Exeter and who founded the Old Exe Bridge on the west side of the City crossing the River Exe.

[3] Walter served several times as Mayor of Exeter and was buried together with his wife in St Edmund's Church on the Exe Bridge.

[5] One of the earliest historians to comment on the Exe Bridge was Richard Izacke (c.1624–1698), who in his 1677 work Antiquities of the City of Exeter wrote as follows:[6] Surviving documentary evidence shows that the bridge was in fact built between 1190 and 1210, and that the date of 1250 given by Izacke (and followed by Prince) is too late.

According to the Devon historian Ethel Lega-Weekes (d.1949), it was Walter[7] Gervais, founder of the Exe Bridge, who in about 1238 built a chapel dedicated to St Loye (St Elegius) in the manor of East Wonford, outside the eastern walls of the City of Exeter, probably as his domestic chapel.

The ruined walls of the Chapel survive today.