Sunday 13 October 2024

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - On the Family Trail

 The primary reason for this visit to England is for our family, the one in the here and now. As a secondary mission, though, DW and I were keen to follow up on our families from the past. Knowing where you've come from is important when you're finding out where you're going, so being in Plymouth specifically and Devon more generally, has given us a great opportunity to explore our roots. And the word roots is apt, because although we have moved away, we both have roots firmly in this part of the world.

 

DW was born in Plymouth, and while her father's side hail originally from Birmingham, and before then Herefordshire, that side of her clan is firmly fixed in Devon. On her mother's side, it's pure Plymouth. For myself, I discovered that one of my great-grandmothers was born in Plymouth, but the bulk of my mother's family was from north Devon, and of course Exeter, Newton Abbot and Torquay. But back to Plymouth.

Without being too specific, because unless it's your family, the details are not of much relevance, I can say that a fair old chunk of DW's family lived and worked within the square mile or so that is known today as the Barbican. Barbican of course means gate into a castle, and that's what the area was in medieval times, when the old castle guarded the mouth of Sutton Pool, the city's original port area. Nowadays it means the old port area in general, stretching up and around the hills that lead to the River Plym. Our family records reliably go back to the turn of the nineteenth century (unreliably they go back further), when the Barbican was a bustling port and surrounded by warehouses and homes, densely packed into the ancient streets around the harbour. 

 

Plymouth is world renowned for being the last stopping point of the famous Mayflower, the ship that took the pilgrims, shockingly unprepared as it turned out, to the New World. Plymouth Massachusetts is noted as their stopping point on mainland North America, named with no small nod to England's Plymouth. The city is also known for it's links to Sir Francis Drake, explorer, pirate, slaver and supposed saviour of Elizabethan England when he chased the Spanish Armada away from its shores. The legend goes that Drake himself watched the Spanish fleet sail past Plymouth Sound while he played Bowls on Plymouth Hoe, before he set his own fleet to sea to harass the Spaniards and apparently prevent an invasion. Drake wasn't a Plymouth boy, he's from Tavistock, a little way up the River Tamar, but Plymouth loudly claims him as its own.

More recently, and in the time span that covers our family researches, Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), Scott of the Antarctic, was a Plymouth lad. All three of his expeditions to Antarctica set off from Plymouth, although Scott himself never made it back to his home town because died where he worked, on the Ross Ice Shelf, during his final expedition. Darwin set sail on at least one of his voyages on The Beagle from Plymouth and is known to have stayed in the city while preparing. You'll gather that Plymouth has quite a history.

 

Not a huge amount of buildings in those teeming streets survive on the Barbican these days. There are some warehouse buildings along the harbour, and dotted around are some fine Elizabethan buildings, beautifully restored and still in some use or other. The old port was superseded to a large extent by the Georgian and Victorian development of the larger deep water port on the western side of the city, on the Devon side of the River Tamar, that came to be known as Devonport. But judging by the railway lines along the old ports quays, it did remain in use for some time alongside Devonport. Urban renewal in the Barbican area had already started prior to the Second World War, but Plymouth took a terrible beating in one single week in 1941 as the Germans took aim at Devonport dockyard, a key Royal Navy base. The Barbican was hit, but not like the centre of the city, which was reduced to rubble in those five raids. After the war, Plymouth necessarily needed to rebuild, and the City Fathers decided to set to work on clearing a lot of the Barbican's older residential streets to build new and modern housing for the people who lived there.

All this background leads up to the fact that while many of DWs family lived and worked around the Barbican, there is precious little left of the nineteenth century warren of streets and ancient houses. Indeed, while much of the original street plan has been retained, so many streets have adopted new names. Thank goodness for the historical projects available through the Internet that document the old against the new.

Our first place to visit was Looe Street, on a hill rising up from the harbour. Records show family living the City's Corporation Dwellings on Looe Street, an early attempt at Urban renewal by the City. One side of the street is stout Corporation buildings, the other still a mix of Elizabethan and Georgian buildings, all of which survived the war. Batter Street, which crosses Looe Street, didn't fare so well and I doubt that members of DW's family who lived and worked there would recognize it now. Indeed, all of the streets on that side of the harbour bear little resemblance to those streets marked out on maps drawn in the late nineteenth century, with the exception of Looe Street.


 
Looe Street past and present

When we ventured into the area on the west side of the harbour, where we're staying, we walked the old street pattern, and saw some wonderful Elizabethan houses, but the streets in which DW's family lived had all been cleared and were now filled with City built post-war flats and houses. We did find what remains of the old castle, and enjoyed some fabulous views over Plymouth Sound, though. 

 

Throughout our research, and wandering the streets, we did find churches. The English Census is organised using ecclesiastical boundaries, and as baptismal, marriage and burial records refer to churches as well, churches tended to jump out at us. In old English towns, there are churches seemingly on every street corner, and our walks around Plymouth have highlighted many churches mentioned in family records. Churches may not have survived German bombs, but they did survive most urban renewal, which is why so many still exist.

My own family, my great-grandmother, was born on the Barbican, was baptised in St. John's church and lived on Stillman Street, before she moved to Exeter with her family. It's an intriguing prospect to think that my family may have known DW's family as they lived just one street away from each other. They would certainly have drunk in the same pubs, one of which still stands and in which we sat and had a drink while we soaked up the atmosphere.

One thing that were able to do was visit the monument to Britain's Royal Navy, situated on The Hoe. On one of the bronze plaques that line the base is the name of one W C Fast, a Petty Officer Stoker who died at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. He's related by marriage to DW's family, people that lived and worked in the Barbican area. There are similar memorials in Portsmouth, and in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and on each of those is listed the names of at least two of my family members. Maybe we'll visit those places in the future.



Further afield, we took a drive with current family out to the North Devon village of Dolton. If I said it was in the boondocks, that would be understating things. Once off the main roads, we were in a maze of tiny lanes, at some point barely wide enough for one vehicle. We twisted and turned for a while, then at probably the narrowest point, met a pair of huge tractors coming towards us, both towing trailers, and both filling the road between the hedgerows to the extent that even on foot you'd have had to go back and find a passing place. I wasn't driving, but we backed up about 400 yards to a point where we and another car could get out of the way of the tractors. Driving in rural Devon is such fun.

Arriving in Dolton, we went into the graveyard of St.Edmund's Church and had a happy half hour perusing the gravestones and looking for my family names. We found a few, too, especially with the handy list of burials and the maps of the burial sites that were inside the church. Baptisms, marriages and burials of my family had all happened here. That said, there were not as many as I had anticipated but I suspect that many of my ancestors were Non-Conformists, that is not Anglican, so had I located a Methodist's chapel I may have found more. It didn't matter, though, because that village and it's environs were the epicentre of the Bater family, one that had spread far and wide in the late nineteenth and early 20th Century. It was from Dolton that people had gone to the New World and settled in Guelph, Ontario, not so far from home in Canada, as well as Alberta and Newfoundland. I have been following in my family's footsteps.


Back in Plymouth, we've discovered yet more of DW's family locales, this time in Devonport on the east side of the city. Like so many other places, pre-war Devonport was largely reduced to rubble by German bombs that were aimed at the adjacent Naval Dockyard. With the help of the National Library of Scotland's free, digital, historic maps we've been able to search out street after street mentioned in Census records that simply don't exist today, but we will take time to run out and visit the area. Similarly, we'll take a run into Exeter next week to have a look at the places my family came from in that fine City, my home in my formative years. But that cam all wait for another entry in this journal.

Tuesday 8 October 2024

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Accommodation

 Here in sunny Devon (very, very wet Devon if I'm truthful), we're staying in a nice little house on Plymouth's historic Barbican, the old port area and point at which the Mayflower sailed for the New World. Allegedly.

We've stayed down on the Barbican before, and because it's so central to the city, you really don't need your own transport while here. Everything you require is quite close by, and there's never anywhere to park anyway. The Barbican also boasts more pubs and fish and chip shops per square mile than anywhere I've ever been. The place is thronging with people, especially at the weekends, and it makes the whole area seem very lively. I have to say that we don't search out lively usually, but this part of the city has always been a hive of activity, so it all fits. In centuries past it was ships and sailors, today it's students and tourists, but either way it's vibrant. I mentioned the pubs, but looking at some 150 year-old maps, there are only a fraction of the number of pubs now compared to then, but the place is still full of them. 


 

Our house is on Stokes Lane, one block back from the quayside, and would have been home to stores and warehouses at some point. The present house dates to the Georgian period, but the stone walls that make up the rear of the house tell of earlier habitation. It's three stories high, four if you include the cellar, an is only about twenty feet across at the front. The door opens straight on to the street, and that itself can't be much more than twenty feet across. According to the little potted history of the house that's in the information folder, the artist Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002) lived in the house at some point in his life, and boy does that man have a history. I'm certain that the house also was home to many a salty old sea dog over the years, and if you looked, I'm sure the deeds would show up a "Sea Captain" or two, which seems to be a code for anyone associated with ships. The cellar, off limits to visitors, may have been used to store contraband, smuggled goods, in years gone by, although I'm certain that most houses in these parts would make that claim.

When we looked at the house on Google StreetView, it looked a bit different to the blurb on the VRBO website, but we worked out that it's undergone some significant refurbishment recently. The owner has updated the place without losing it's essential structure, so we are in a narrow, old house, but with all modern conveniences, and very comfortable it is too. I don't think it's on the list of Scheduled Buildings, or Listed in anyway, which would explain the blue frontage and modern windows. That said, there is a bit of a musty smell to the place, which is understandable, and it takes a bit of heating to take the edge off the chill. England can feel damp at the best of times, especially when just yards from the sea, and in an old stone house. Thank goodness for Natural Gas and some nice radiators.


 

The reason we're here at all is family related, not least because this is DW's home town. Family tree research has linked my family to the City as well, one of my Great-Grandmothers being born in a house just on the other side of the harbour, not more than a quarter of a mile from where I'm typing this. Family tree research isn't our reason to visit, but we'll definitely do a little looking around while we're here.

Given that it's raining stair rods out there at the moment, we won't be off exploring the area today, but when the rain does ease off then I'll document our travels.

Monday 7 October 2024

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Arriving


 Another trip eastwards and across the ocean for us, this time to DW's ancestral home Plymouth. Not the Plymouth of Massachusetts, but the one in Devon from whence the Mayflower sailed. We haven't brought the Airstream, obviously, but I thought I'd document the trip here, especially given that we might have been camping were we not in Merrie Olde England.

Travelling to England is always expensive, and always a chore. We'd booked the best price seats we could manage given that we wanted a full service airline, Premium Economy seats, and a direct flight (so not cheap), and placed our faith in British Airways from Toronto's Pearson Airport to London Heathrow. That of course meant a drive up the dreaded Highway 401. It's construction season on Canada's roads right now, and we knew that there were around six or seven different construction sites between home and the airport, and because we were travelling on a Friday afternoon we decided to allow ourselves plenty of time. It was a good job that we did.

We were about twenty-five minutes past our target leaving time, and immediately hit a snag when the train crossing lights started flashing on LaCroix Street in town, and we spent five minutes watching one of those never ending freight trains pass by, although the angst was slightly offset watching a couple of drivers ahead of us panic when then realised they'd stopped so close to the tracks that the barriers would likely hit their cars when they came down. I mean, there's half a dozen trains through there daily, so it's not like it's a rare event, but still they stop on the tracks. But I digress.

 


On the 401 it was busy. Wall-to-wall trucks, but at least it was moving. That lasted up until Colonel Talbot Road when we hit the first of many, many slow-downs. On a trip that should take just on three hours door-to-door, it took us over four hours. The Friday afternoon traffic likely made things worse, but that run up was the worst I'd experienced in my fifteen years in Canada. But in this case, we'd left so much slack in the schedule that we were not even mildly late for our flight.

Toronto's Pearson airport isn't the best place to be on a Friday evening, but then it's not the worst, either. The check-in area in Terminal 3 isn't really big enough to accommodate the number of people that use it, but then again, neither is the same space in Terminal 1. We dumped our bags in fairly short order and made our way through security screening without too much of a fuss. Airside, things have changed a little from when I first started travelling regularly through the airport. Firstly you're forced to walk through a big duty-free perfume selling store (which was new), and the long departure gate arm now has many more retail outlets than it used to have. It certainly gives the place a livelier feel, but they are all, without exception, hugely over-priced. London's Heathrow airport has long been known as "Thief-row" thanks to the high prices levied on airside clients, and Pearson Airport is catching up. We were in Terminal 3 last November but things had changed even since then, with most of the regular seating removed and replaced by tables, with a central restaurant and bar in the centre. In T1 there are I-Pads on the tables through which you can order your over-priced food and drink to be delivered to your table. Now it's just a QR code etched on a metal plate on the table and you can order the same over-priced food and drink from your cell phone. I don't think I'd mind too much if the tabled area formed only part of the departures seating, but it doesn't, it's all encompassing. You don't have to make an order when you're sat at the tables, but it's kind of implied. It's not as if any of this is essential for the travelling public because pretty much every flight out of there gives you a meal within an hour of takeoff anyway. My cynical mind tells me it's all about profit, and I'm never in the mood to voluntarily help the GTAA (Greater Toronto Airport Authority) get rich. We, being the ever economical souls that we are, brought home made sandwiches. I did spoil things by going to buy an over-priced cup of coffee from Starbucks, but walked away from the line waiting when the three people serving seemed that talking among themselves was more important than moving the line and actually selling coffee. In my annoyance I bought a bottle of water and KitKat for the eye-watering sum of $9.38, which was three times what I'd have spent at Starbucks. But hey, principles are principles.

Our aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350, wide-bodied mediocrity and indistinguishable from any other in its class. The Premium Economy cabin is over the wing so my two windows, one slightly behind me and one slightly in front, were not going to be of much use. The two overhead storage bins above us were marked "Crew Only", so I heaved our bags into one on the other side of the aisle, much to the consternation of the people sitting below it. Being English, the woman made a quiet comment about not using "their bins", but made her feelings truly known with the fixed stare she gave me.

Our seats were not the most comfortable I've ever sat in, but were so far from the seat in front that the tray table was mounted in the arm rest of our seats and not on the back of the seats in front. The seats also reclined with a leg support coming up from below. I like to sit up so didn't use that function, and nor did the woman sitting in front of me, which was fortunate. As is normal though, the person sitting in front of DW did recline, fully, so she was forced to recline as well, although as she was intended on a goodly nap, that was OK. Me climbing over DW while the seats were reclined was pure comedy, but when you have to go, you have to go.

The meal served about an hour into the flight was, well, not my thing. The choices were Cod with Polenta, or Curry. I have a feeling it was the same choice on the flight we took to London last year. When it was served, the fish was OK, but the Polenta was horrible and the little bowl of ricey stuff that was on the side looked and smelled like the sort of thing I would pay not to eat. I don't know why British Airways insist on serving food that they think might look a "a bit jazzy", and pretty much always contain a curry option. Air Transat did the same for a while, but reverted to more standard fare when people like me moaned about it. The best meal on a 'plane I ever had was on a charter flight from Kephalonia to London, and it was a beef stew. If the charter people can do it, surely the major airlines can. The "hot snack" served before landing was a "hot mess", and again I ask why? Trying too hard to be too fancy really doesn't work.

I couldn't get comfortable during the flight, even when resorting to the old standard sleep aid or watching Bridget Jones' Diary for the umpteenth time, and as a consequence didn't sleep much. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had suggested some good Northern Lights viewing that night, but nothing. Curse that Astronaut. It was thick cloud cover as the day dawned and we flew over my other ancestral home, Ireland, and it stayed cloudy pretty much until we popped out of the clouds a few miles from Heathrow. All in all, it was a bit of a manky flight. That said, it left Toronto bang on time, and arrived in London ahead of schedule, so well done BA.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow is a wondrous place, but when you get dropped at a gate far from the terminal you have a choice of a long walk, or get crammed onto and all too infrequent shuttle train that runs to the terminal. Every time we've been presented with the shuttle option it's been overcrowded beyond belief, so we decided on the walk this fine morning. There were a few of those moving sidewalk things, but still a fair bit of walking, although having been sat still for six hours or so, it was not a bad thing.

 

The bags came out quite quickly at the luggage reclaim, and we made our way down to the Heathrow Express train, which was no mean feat with me hauling two big cases. The Heathrow Express is one of three rail-based options to get into London from the airport, is the fastest by far, and the most expensive. The Elizabeth Line is a new rail line across London and would take us into Paddington railway station directly, if a little more slowly. The Underground's Piccadilly Line would get us to Paddington with a change of trains at Gloucester Road, but is a seriously slow way of travelling given that there are many, many stops on the line. While the Express may have been expensive, I bought the tickets online, ahead of time, and with our rail discount card, the price was only around £6 each for the single fare, as opposed to the regular £25 if you buy on the day without a discount card. When the train starts its run into Paddington, you soon realise why it's called the Express, because that thing really flies. It takes fifteen minutes from Terminal 1 & 2 to Paddington, compared to over an hour on the Underground, which is quite impressive.

At Paddington, we had a wait before picking up our train to Plymouth. About a three hour wait. To get a well priced ticket on British trains, you have to plump for a specific train, and book seats. Doing that, and using the discount card, we were able to afford First Class tickets, which in this case worked very well for us as we were able to use the First Class Lounge at Paddington Station. The lounge is three rooms, two with sofas and the like, and one with tables and chairs. Snacks and drinks, non-alcoholic of course, are complimentary, so we hunkered down for the duration, just happy to shake off the rigours of the journey so far. It being Saturday, the station was busy with non-commuters, many heading to football matches. I took a quick walk up onto Praed Street, just outside the station, and surveyed the very familiar scene. A student nurse of my acquaintance worked at St. Mary's Hospital just next door to the station, and while she didn't merit a Blue Plaque on the wall, Sir Alexander Fleming did his groundbreaking work on Penicillin there and has a Blue Plaque, and the royal princes William and Harry were born there. Like so many other streets in London, notable things have happened there. While up on the street, I came across a heap of London Black Cabs, all purring along using electric motors rather than the old chug-chug diesel engines of the past. It turns out that the cabs are hybrids and do have their internal combustion engines, but a lot of the time run noiselessly and smokelessly on battery power. What with the hybrid buses as well, London's air is getting so much more breathable.

 

When it was time to board our train (they notify you of the appropriate platform only minutes before departure), we looked in vain for Coach K, where our booked seats were located. A quick question to one of the train's crew revealed that they were short of a few coaches and there definitely wasn't a Coach K. All seat bookings had been cancelled as a result, so it was sit anywhere. Fortunately the train wasn't terribly full, so we found a couple of seats and settled in for the run down to the Westcountry. Like the aircraft we'd flown in, the seats here were not the most comfortable, but there was plenty of room. And, like the lounge at the station, snacks and drinks were complementary. Similar to the Heathrow Express, this train took off like a scalded rabbit and we were quickly pelting through west London at a serious clip and heading to Reading. The weather was OK and the scenery getting greener as we crossed and recrossed the River Thames. Reading, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Totnes and finally Plymouth, took us a little over three hours. The weather closed in, the sea was battering the sea wall at Dawlish, and by the time we reached Plymouth, the rain was coming down, but then this is the Westcountry in October, so nothing unusual about that.

 

A short taxi ride from the station and we were on Plymouth's famous Barbican, and opening up Number One, Stokes Lane, our home for the next two weeks. We were both shattered, but did manage to get out to the Co-Op for some essential supplies, dodge the many young people out in the wet streets, and buy some proper English fish and chip shop chips, which is surely the best way to end what was a long and uncomfortable trip.

I'll write a little about our accommodation in the next instalment, and about the purpose of the trip, but for now, I'll round off this very long post by saying it was very nice to be back in Devon.