Greenbank

It would appear that the original Green Bank was the wonderfl sloping lawn of the eleven acre estate that surrounded Green Bank House. This splendid Victorian villa was probably built early in the second half of the nineteenth century when wealthy merchants were starting to look just outside the immediate Plymouth area to find convenient plots on which to construct new and expensive residences for themselves.

James Rosewall moved into Green Bank house in the 1860s and his sons initials (EJ and JJ) can still be seen on the horse trough, given by the family, which stands at the junction of Green Bank Road and Lipson Road. this was the southwestern extremity of their land.

Today all of the eleven acre site has been developed. The original Green Bank House, which stood on a site roughly half-way up Diamond Avenue, was an early casualty of the expansion of massed ranks of terraced housing which were built towards the end of the last century to house the growing Plymouth population.

EH 22 January 1994