Early maps suggest that Ford Park more or less covered that area that we know today as Mutley Plain, while Mutley proper was further up the hill -quite a bit further up the hill in fact. The Mutley Park we know today was barely half way towards the original Mutley, the ‘gemot leah’, the meeting of the ways, the crossroads at which the old northern route to Tavistock met the east-west road from Plympton to Saltash. The house known as Sungates, at the entrance to the Tor Estate off Mannamead Road marks that area today.
At that time what we now know as Mutley Plain was far from plain, or level, rather it had high spots and low spots which were, largely levelled out following the introduction of the Turnpike Acts and the improvement of the main roads generally. Notwithstanding its earlier unevenness however, this was the only dry route out of Plymouth, and it could just be that Ford Park describes the dry area -the ford park – between the streams that ran down from Tor and Houndiscombe to meet the tidal seawater at Pennnycomequick, and the top of the tidal Lipson Creek, which came up at least as far as St Augustine’s Church in Alexandra Road.
