The Esplanade

Originally the term Esplanade was restricted to describing oart of a fortification - "the glacis of the counterscarp, or sloping of the parapet of the covered way toward the country". Before long however it was being more generally applied to the "void space between the Glacis of a Citadel, and the first Houses of a Town" (Kersey 1708)

All of which implies that the term was probably in use in Plymouth before the last century. By that time the term had a much broader application and it's interesting to compare our esplanade with one developed elsewhere in the country, where we learn of "an esplanade... on which... the foundations of a regular street were laid". An esplanade at Wymouth is first mentioned in 1805 and by then it was common to describe almost any peice of levelled ground intended as an area for public promenade, as an esplanade.

Interestingly though, the Plymouth example fits very will with the earlier, more specific use of the term and when built the houses of the Esplanade stood, but for osborne Place, quite isolated from the rest of town and almost as close to the citadel as it was to any other houses.

EH 6 August 1994