Like Granby Way and Raglan Road, Colborne Road serves as a reminder of Plymouth’s dwindling military presence. Time was when there was a local barracks that bore each of those names and, as you might expect, each street name is near the barracks it commemorates. However Colborne Road deviates a little from that last statement in that Seaton was the name of the barracks – it was also the name that Sir John Colborne adopted when he was created a baron in 1839. The sixty-one year old soldier chose to become Lord Seaton because he had intended to buy a property near Seaton itself, as fate would have it though he ended up moving from Lyneham (Plympton) to Kitley and finally to Beechwood, near Sparkwell, where he died in 1863.
Within three years a fine statue had been struck of the great man and it was erected at Mount Wise, where it stood until just before the last war when it was moved to Crownhill. At the same time Crownhill Barracks (“hutments”) were renamed Seaton Barracks.
During the course 1999 the barracks all but disappeared – the statue having been evacuated some time earlier – it now stands at Winchester Army Museum thanks to a request from a member of Colborne’s family.
