Barley Sheaf

It stood near the entrance to Devonport market, at the end of Catherine Street at the junction with Market Street and Duke Street. Closed since the war, it nevertheless was still standing many years later. In 1954 its licence was removed to the Grapes Tavern in Charlotte Street and soon afterwards this part of Devonport found itself inside the new wall around the extended dockyard.

The name is one of the oldest in the pub canon and is a variant on the old Barley Mow; barley being one of the main ingredients of beer. The simplest way to advertise that ale was on sale was to hang up a sign showing a stack, mow or sheaf of the bearded cereal. One of Devonport’s oldest pubs, our earliest reference to it shows that Elizabeth Hancock was licensee here during the Napoleonic Wars (from at least 1798 to 1814) - a boom time for the town.