Freedom Fields

There is in Freedom Fields Park a memoril commemorating the "Sabbath Day fight" - the greatest local setback suffered by the royalists during the Civil War. The encounter took place on Sunday 3rd December 1643 and was seen at the time as the "Great Deliverance" from the long seige which was never again to yield an attack on Plymouth's entrenched Parliamentarians.

Freedom Fields does not, however, take its name from this encounter, rather it marks a much earlier local victory. In 1403 raiding French Bretons were defeated in fighting around what is now Bretonside and thereafter annual freedom"celebrations were held, with "organised and tolerated" fighting between the Old Town boys and the Burton (Breton) Boys.

As Plymouth expanded the venue for this almost riotous ritual moved out to what then became the Freedoms fields we know today... In 1872 though the annualfights were discontinued after "some young gentlemen had their collarbones broken".

EH 31 December 1994