Cattewater

In 1894 the great scholar E. Cobham Brewer published a revised version of his Dictionary of Fable and Phrase. Full of all manner of delightful explanations of words, names and phrases in everyday use, it is unusual to find a place name in there and even more unusual to find one relevant to Plymouth - but there is one - Catwater.

And alongside it, this entry: “The estuary of the Plym (Plymouth). A corruption of chateau (chat-eau); as the castle at the mouth of the Plym used to be called”. Logical though this explanation may be, derived as it is from the French for cat and water, one wonders where Brewer found his information for it doesn't appear in any local maps or histories.

Curiously though the first reference to either Cattedown or Cattewater appears in records from 1249, before record of any castle. The early form is simply la Catte, which undoubtedly has a French flavour but consensus seems to be that the name originally referred to a physical land feature, a cat-like one, and not unlike the "Bear" that was once on the water's edge off the Cattewater.