Brickfields

“Brickfields - site of clay pits and bricks manufactured: upper part known as Brickfields and lower as Parsonage Fields - now all Brickfields.” So wrote Henry Whitfeld in “Plymouth and Devonport in Times of War and Peace”, written at the end of the nineteenth century.

Actual evidence of these clay pits and the manufacture of bricks here is more difficult to unearth, however there is no reason to doubt the explanation of this, one of the city's more obvious place-names. Long since owned by the Crown and at one time an integral part of the defensive lines of old Devonport, hence the massive drop that separates the two levels of playing areas, the Brickfields, once the scene of frequent military reviews, is better known to present-day Plymothians as a sports and athletics arena.

EH 26 March 1994