Plymouth

Plymouth owes its importance to the magnificent estuary into which drain the rivers Plym and Tamar. The original settlement was at Sutton, the name Plymouth being attached to the harbour. Sutton Prior was a borough in the 13th cent. and Plymouth developed from a small fishing village. By Leland's time, in the 1530s, it was ‘very large’ with ‘a goodly rode for great shippes’. The war against Spain in Elizabeth's reign brought Plymouth into national prominence. Drake and his colleagues sailed from the Hoe to defeat the Armada and Essex left in 1596 with his expedition against Cadiz. During the civil wars, Plymouth was of great strategic importance as a parliamentary bastion in a predominantly royalist region and resisted repeated attempts to subdue it. After the Restoration it increased with the growth of the navy. The royal citadel, to strengthen the defences, was begun in 1666 and the dockyard at Devonport was developed in William III's reign. In the course of the 18th cent., it passed Exeter in population, though Plymouth, Stonehouse, and Devonport were brought under one administration as late as 1914. As a vital naval base, within easy bombing range from occupied France, Plymouth suffered heavily in the Second World War, and the subsequent replanning did not command total enthusiasm. The population in 2002 was 250,000.

J. A. Cannon