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

Part two of the family trail involved some schlepping around Plymouth to discover places that DW's relatives had lived, with DW's dad both driving the car and giving some rather good commentary of people and places. That was followed, next day, by some schlepping around Devon's county town Exeter, to see where my relatives had lived, with me being the tour guide, but in the company of my my brother and his wife.

In Plymouth we made for Devonport, on the west side of the city, on the Devon bank of the River Tamar. If you know anything about Plymouth beyond the Mayflower, you'll know that Devonport is the Royal Navy's westernmost deep water port and dockyard, and even now it occupies a very large chunk of the city. It's the reason that Plymouth has outgrown Exeter with its requirement for labour and associated industries to supply the Naval Base. You'll not be surprised to hear that DW's relatives were both Navy and Dockyard people.

First we visited the house where DW's dad was born. In a city that was largely flattened in the Second World War, it's a total surprise that the house, and it's adjacent pub, are still standing. Indeed, it's one of the few pre-war buildings left in the area, surrounded as it is by so much post-war redevelopment. The street plans are largely the same, but the buildings most definitely are not. Past the dockyard we headed north to some late nineteenth century streets of workers houses in the district of Keyham, Before we got there, though, we negotiated a kink in the road that skirted a new part of the dockyard, which was quite significant in DW's history. What had been there were streets of Victorian workers' houses, including Moon Street, Mooncove Street and John Street, all of which featured in various census records attached to DW's family. Old maps clearly show the streets but, thanks to bombing and urban renewal, the dockyard absorbed the space, pulled down what remained, and built new Dockyard facilities. We couldn't even see what's there because it's all behind high walls and barbed wire now. 

Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth. The red box is where John Street and Moon street used to be, and the yellow box is the area where Victory and Fleet Streets still are

 

Up at Keyham, more Dockyard housing to be sure, was Victory Street, Fleet Street, Renown Street and sundry other Naval-themed road names, containing rows of those Victorian terraced cottages. We located one significant house, but enjoyed taking in the whole. Yes, many of the houses are now painted in bright colours, and there are parked cars, end to end, lining every street, but the essential structure was plain to see. While the houses were small, these were the Victorian's alternative to the back-to-back houses of the industrial cities of England, strung out on long streets, I think because space wasn't quite so hard to come by in Plymouth. Other big cities also has these streets with somewhat improved housing for the labouring classes, including London and Manchester.

Then it was back to Devonport and the street, if not the house, where DW was born. It's located only a few hundred yards from those streets that had been absorbed into the Dockyard that I mentioned earlier, and fronts onto the north side of Devonport Park. Old maps show the line of houses running right down to the river, but now they've all been swept away, by bombing and urban renewal.We visit this street, Milne Place, every time we come to Plymouth, as a kind of pilgrimage. We had a stroll around the park, not looking its best, it has to be said, because at this time of year the city's re-wilding program tends to look a bit shabby; it's great in the summer, though. While we were there, DW's dad told us some great tales of life during and after the war in that part of Plymouth.

Modern day High Street in Stonehouse, with part of the Naval Hospital on the right

 

The final stop on the tour was High Street in Stonehouse, just west of Devonport, where more addresses appeared on census forms. The houses that had once lined the street are all long gone, and the school that stands there, even though it dates back to 1897, was built after those houses had been pulled down. Just a few yards away, we did get a look at the old Royal Naval Hospital, now a fancy gated community of houses and apartments, where DW's grandfather had died. There is family history on every corner in this city.

At this juncture I will make a comment that relates to how cities ought to be run. In Plymouth, where the bombs and urban renewal rebuilt the old parts of the town, the city fathers erected many thousands of houses and flats, all owned and controlled by the City Council. So many people displaced then had a house with hot and cold water, heating and lighting, with a fair rent, and were not trapped into squalour by private landlords. Despite the best efforts of Margaret Thatcher in the seventies and eighties, many of these houses and flats remain under City control and provide affordable homes for the people of Plymouth. Certainly Plymouth is not perfect, but when you read and see the issues caused by a lack of affordable housing, in the UK and in Canada, Plymouth stands out as a beacon of sensible housing provision.

Some of Plymouth's Social Housing, this in High Street, Stonehouse

In Exeter it was all about my mother's family, although first we had to get there. We took a cab to the station, which put us well ahead of schedule, thank goodness, because the blight of privatized railways hit us again. Both the train from Plymouth to Exeter St, David's, and the train from St.Davids to Exeter Central, were cancelled. Back in the halcyon days of British Rail, it was rare to get trains cancelled like that. Sometimes on or two of the local, five-an-hour commuter trains would get dropped, but longer distance trains would pretty much always run. On our recent trips to the UK, though, we have been hit by longer-distance trains being cancelled, with alarming regularity. Interestingly, I have worked for one of Britain's private train operators so I know how they do things in their quest for ever greater profits, at the expense of the paying customer. They run with absolutely no slack in their systems. Drivers and other staff are poorly paid, so are hard to recruit and retain. If any don't show up for work there is simply no facility to insert alternative staff to run the services. The excuse for the cancellation of the train to Exeter varied, too, which means blame shifting was in operation, as in "it wasn't our fault, it was someone else". The Rail Regulator has proved ineffective at holding the train operating companies to account, so the run of cancelled trains continues. In a country where train travel is becoming more popular than ever as people get fed up of congested roads, this really isn't acceptable. Margaret Thatcher has a lot to answer for. The result of cancelled trains is overcrowding on the trains that do run. Our first available service service was a Cross-Country operated service from Penzance to Edinburgh in Scotland. As is usual with that company, the train was just four cars long, and was quite full when it arrived in Plymouth. Because of the cancelled train, more people than usual crammed onto the Cross-Country and we ended up having to stand by the bicycle storage area because all the seats were taken. Every Cross-Country train I've ever used has been only four or six cars long and has had people standing for long periods of time. That's great for the accountants, more paying customers per train, but not so good for the poor folks who end up in those packed trains. We gave up at Newton Abbot and hopped off to pick up a local stopping train that went to Exeter Central via Exeter St. David's. Slower for sure, but at least we had a seat. Anyway, I digress (a lot).

 

We met up with Bro and Mrs Bro and made our way through historic Exeter, past the wonderful Norman and Gothic cathedral (longest unbroken Gothic church roof in the world!), with me adding a ton of interesting (!) stories about all the places we passed We made our way to the White Hart Hotel in South Street for lunch and a beer or two, and caught up with current family issues. The White Hart is one of those places that was a fixture for me, somewhere I've passed a thousand time, although I couldn't remember ever having been inside. It's an old coaching inn and has a delightful little alleyway between the two Elizabethan buildings it occupies, and thinking back, my dad may have showed me into the alley at some point, because it did feel familiar. I definitely hadn't been in the pub, but then I left Exeter when I was fourteen, so that'd be the reason for that.

 

From the White Hart we set off to explore the square mile that's known as the West Quarter, the land between the Cathedral and the Quay on the River Exe.It's steeped in history, right from Roman times, and it's where a good proportion of my mum's family resided in the nineteenth century, and the first half of the twentieth century. Like the Barbican in Plymouth, this port area was crammed with poor families all trying to eke out a living between the port and the city, and occupations listed in the census forms include Fish Hawker, Hawking Labourer, Charwoman and Laundress. While the street pattern remains, at least in part, two major events changed the West Quarter irrevocably. The first was the bombing of the city in April and May 1942, when German bombers attacked Exeter for its cultural and historical significance rather than any strategic or military importance. The second was the act of civic vandalism in the early 1960s that drove a new road through the West Quarter, cutting streets in two and removing vast swathes of earlier housing. Worse was the removal of large chunks of the city's Roman wall. The only saving grace in any of it was the physical moving of a fifteen century merchant's house, to make way for the road. Urban renewal had actually started in the 1920s, when poor quality housing was replaced with more modern dwellings, but the building of the road, the Western Way, was a terrible time for that part of Exeter. That said, most of the churches survived, as did Stepcote Hill, a place where my ancestors are recorded as having lived, and that ensured that our exploration based on census records was easy to achieve. 

 

We made our way down to the river, past the old medieval Exe Bridge, now landlocked, and the tower of St. Edmund's Church. The river has been much altered over the centuries, from the Roman port right through to the Victorian era. Indeed, we stopped in a pub in an area known locally as Exe Island, yet it's not on an island. Well, it isn't now, but it was in the late 1800s. The pub was in an old Bonded Store, one of the many Victorian buildings that survive on the Quay. I did want to have a drink in a pub called the Bishop Blaize, in Ewing Square. Old maps show the pub being there in 1888, and I had relatives living in Ewing Street and Cricklepit Mill Lane, just yards away. Unfortunately the streets have gone, as have most of the buildings, and the pub was closed. Maybe another day.

Like so many cities and towns in England, there is history on every corner in Exeter, and even as we threaded our way back to the station were were walking past significant historical points, and of course my boyhood memories. DW and Mrs Bro did a sterling job of listening and pretending to be interested, which made my day. Bro was just ten years old when he left Exeter, but we managed to stir some of his memories as well.

The run back to Plymouth was without incident, and without cancelled trains. We opted for the stopping train to Newton Abbot again, although that beautiful run between Exeter and Newton Abbot, taking in the Rivers Exe and Teign, and the run along the narrow gap between high red cliffs and the English Channel, wasn't as good as it could have been because it was getting dark. If you like trains, though, Google "Dawlish Sea Wall Trains".

 

Those runs out have pretty much concluded our family explorations for this trip. It was great to tread where our ancestors had trod (is that a word?), and it's given us an added dimension to our family trees. I think I can say mission accomplished.