Hawkers Avenue

Time was when this short stretch, which runs north off Sutton Pool, bore the delightful name of the Old Tree Slip. Here, for many years, a salt-refining operation was based in a property alongside the slip. But, by 1817, the old Salt House had become the Sawyer's Arms.

Ever evolving, like all parts of the harbour, the present name dates from the time when the Hawkers, a family of wine-merchants, moved into the area. Colonel John Hawker had been appointed the first American consul in Plymouth in 1790. The Hawker wine-trading concern was officially established in 1808, although the family had been dealing in wine and timber for some years before that. The Hawkers are now long gone, and their distinctive slate-hung offices in Hawkers Avenue have since been put to other uses.

Meanwhile, their old wine-cellars on the harbour's edge have been demolished, and in 1987 a large block of sympathetically designed flats, Harbourside Court, was created on the site.