High Street

Time was when each of the Three Towns had a High Street, which is not surprising because it is one of the most common street names in the country. Typically a High Street will not be one that is in an elevated position, it will be rather be one where you would expect to find, either now or at some stage in the past, some of the principal buinesses in a village, town or city.

In Plymouth and in Stonehouse the market was at some stage very close by, for this was the high street in the sense of being a high-way rather a by-way. The Devonport High Street was just off Fore Street, itself a name with similar connotations, while the Plymouth High Street ran down from the Market, which once stood at the junction of Whimple Street and Looe Street. Today most of it has been renamed Buckwell Street and only the Stonehouse High Street remains.

With none of its original buildings now standing this High Street is what used to be the western end of the main road, or rather lane, from Plymouth to Stonehouse - long before the construction of Union Street, when Stonehouse was just a small community clustered around what is now the area in the immediate vicinity of the roundabout just below Ha'penny Bridge.