Athenaeum Street

At the beginning of the nineteenth century most large towns and cities in this country sported a number of new clubs constituted by various members of the local intellectual community. Plymouth was no exception and one such club was the Plymouth Institution founded in 1812. Early meetings were held in the then newly-built Plymouth Dispensary, in Catherine Street. In 1815 they moved to Frankfort Place and by 1817 the club was doing so well that ounder member John Foulston, who had come to Plymouth in 1810 to design the Theatre Royal, offered to plan a purpose-built meeting place. This became the original Athenaeum, modelled on the Temple of Theseus in the Agora of Athens and named after the Athenaeum, the temple of Athene, goddess of Wisdom, in the same Greek city.

Bombed in 1941 a new Athenaeum, combining theatre and lecture hall, was opened on the site twenty years later, and the Plymouth Institution still meets there. Meanwhile Athenaeum Street, largely unspoilt and alsodesigned by Foulston, still runs up to the Hoe from No.1 the Crescent, another Foulston building.

EH 8 October 1994