Pilla's Roof Road

While there is no evidence of a proper Roman Road in Plymouth, records recently unearthed suggest that alongside Plymouth’s oldest known street – Bilbury Street, at Breton Side – there was another, similarly named street, which was Plymouth’s first solid-surfaced thoroughfare.

The earliest documentary evidence we have for Bilbury Street appears in 1342 – “it means Billa’s burgh, and a burgh was a defended place” wrote Crispin Gill in ‘Plymouth A New History’. Substantially renamed Exeter Street on the northern fringes of Sutton Pool, the name Bilbury is still in use today. Not so that of its near neighbour. This unusually named thoroughfare was laid down after the very large Saxon dwelling inside this erstwhile ‘defended place’ was blown down in a severe storm in 1397 and the debris, most notably the roof timbers, were set out as a timbered road just above the then muddy shoreline. Long since built over as the North Quay extended the harbour boundary southwards, the street was known, perhaps as a result of a miss-spelling or mispronunciation, as Pilla’s Roof Road.

EH 01 April 2006 [NB April Fool's Day]