PLYMOUTH |
The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History |
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Plymouth had more than one "Island House" and this article about the second one, between Bedford and Basket Streets, in the centre of the Town, is reproduced in full as an interesting description of the area in which it stood. It appeared in the Western Morning News in March 1880. The article was originally a single paragraph so it has been split in to several paragraphs to make it easier to read. 'The removal of the "Island House" marks an epoch in the structural history of Plymouth that cannot be allowed to pass over without comment, though I am afraid a good many Plymothians sadly exaggerate the antiquity and importance of that now rapidly disappearing obstruction. It has no such claims to respect, if not to reverence, as had the "Old Palace", with its memories of Merchant Paynter and Catherine of Aragon. It had no architectural beauties, and its only noteworthy artistic feature, an old carven chimneypiece, marking the transition period between the ancient structural fireside and the meagre modern mantleshelf, was in all probability removed from some older building. For the Island House" -- it was originally undivided -- actually does not appear in Donne's map Plymouth, which was published in 1765, and in which its site in the Pig Market, the still remembered original name of Bedford-street, is occupied by a garden. In those days Westwell-street was a narrow way leading to the Hoe called Love-lane, and the chief thoroughfare from Frankfort Gate -- the site of which is now partly occupied by the "Globe" -- eastward was through Basket-street, which many of us yet remember as having all the marks of former importance in its fine old Elizabethan houses. What is now Bedford-street was then quite narrow and insignificant. The "Island House" is, however, if of little importance in itself, a link between the old Pig Market, and what we may call our modern Prado. When it was erected there still stood on the north side of the street, partly on the site of the "Borough Arms", a substantial granite house with an open courtyard, which is said to have belonged to the Cistercians, but every vestige of which has long since gone. A whole cluster of old alms-houses, some of a very picturesque character, were still in full occupation hard by. Fowne's between Bedford and Basket-streets, had for example an open gallery towards Bedford-street. They consisted of fourteen rooms, seven above and seven below, and were not removed until 1808. Twenty years before that, however, when "this old house was new", Prynne's and Miller's Alms-houses had passed away. They were at the extreme eastern end of Bedford-street by the church-yard, and were partly entered from Bedford-street and partly from an alley behind, approached by a flight of steps and called Buckingham Alley. This was the same means of approach that so many of us remember as the only passage from Bedford-street into Catherine-street ere the "Church Twelves" had disappeared, and the Hospital of the Poor's Portion had ceased to be. The site of these almshouses is now in the street; when they were removed it was partly appropriated to the churchyard, partly to fish-stalls, which in time themselves gave place to some miserable shops built against the churchyard wall. A far more interesting relic of old Plymouth, of which we know nothing, except its existence may have survived in part down to the sale of the "Island" -- the hall of the Guild of Corpus Christi, which certainly stood somewhere about the site of the shops with which Bedford-street now faces the Globe. As to the history of the "Island", I have already said that it is almost non-existent. It did a thriving business as a public-house back in the old war time, when it was very convenient to the "Theatre at Frankfort Gate", the building now in the occupation of Mr Eyre. The "New Tree Inn" was the name by which it was known -- in distinction probably to some tavern which stood by "the great tree" in Briton Side, so famous that it finds mention in the borough records centuries ago as one of the chief landmarks of the town, and that it is inserted in the ancient maps, and which in its later days sheltered John Wesley and many of the out-door preachers of his and even a later generation. There was a time when Plymouth was proud of its trees, and did not hurl them down in the Citadel-road fashion. Even when the Island House took the place of the garden which preceded it, all the trees that had grown there were not demolished and thus the "New Tree Inn" was really no anachronism.'
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