Vauxhall Street

Vauxhall Street, which runs from the end of Notte Street to Bretonside, is one of the oldest streets in Plymouth. Earlier references to it appear in the late 15^th century, not that there is much surface evidence to suggest such a history today.

Those early references talk not of Vauxhall but Foxhole – ‘a direct reference to the rural state of early Plymouth’, writes Crispin Gill in Plymouth: A New History. Foxhole Street originally ran from the King’s Head past the bottoms of How Street, Looe Street and Stillman Street to the long vanished Ring o’ Bells. From that corner to the end of Notte Street it was known as Woolster Street.

The earlier and better-known Vauxhall, on the south bank of the Thames in London, came from the hall or manor belonging to Falkes de Beaute, who married into a family which owned land in that area in the 13^th century.