One of Plymouth’s shorter thoroughfare’s, Harbour Avenue was originally a link between North Quay and Exeter Street, and was pretty much on the outskirts of town. Among the handful of buildings here a hundred years ago were a Baptist Mission Room on one side of the street and a Gospel Union Mission Room on the other. Just up from the latter, on the north side of Lower Street, was the local Police Station. Today it’s little more than a short open road to the east of the towering new flat developments that now line North Quay.
The name itself is logical enough, being the pretty much the first route to the harbour from the eastern approach to Plymouth. The word “harbour” itself originally meant simply to provide shelter and it had been in use for hundreds of years before it was employed for the first time, by the Tudors, in a ship sheltering capacity.
