Eton Avenue/Place/Street/Terrace

When the streets around Eton Place, Eton Street, Eton Avenue and Eton Terrace were first developed in the early 19^th century, the area was known locally as New Town. Sitting in what had been part of the green belt running around the north of Plymouth, just below Five Fields Lane (later incorporated into North Road West), the new community would have had quite a distinct character.

Many of the better-off Plymouth families would have looked to relocate here from the desperately overcrowded town nestled around what we now call the Barbican area. The developers would have been looking for street names that conjured up images of upward mobility, so it is no coincidence that the various Etons here are connected by Oxford Place, which ran across the top of the long-gone Cambridge Street, three names instantly conveying a flavour of English heritage and education upon the new Plymouth streets.

Eton College was founded in Eton (opposite Windsor on the Thames) by Henry VI in 1440-41, a little under 200 years after the great universities at Oxford (1249) and Cambridge (1284).