With so many high spots occupying splendid vantage points dotted around the city, it is no surprise to find that several of them were named in a way to convey both a sense of location and an indication of the grandeur of the property surmounting it.
Setting the tone was undoubtedly the most impressive of the all, Mount Edgcumbe House, which dates from the middle of the sixteenth century and this was soon followed by its counterpart on the other side of the Tamar, Mount Wise, an impressive late-Tudor structure that was swept away fairly soon after work began on the Dockyard in the 1690s.
Further up the river however, we find Mount Tamar, home in the late-eigtheenth and early-nineteenth century to Captain Sir Thomas Byard. A distinguished naval officer, who had commanded many ships – among them the Victory and the Impregnable – Byard was succeeded in later years in this house by equally distinguished army officer, Lieutenant John Chard, hero of the celebrated Rorke’s Drift incident in the Zulu Wars.
Used as an Open Air School for delicate children for some years in the twentieth century, Mount Tamar was pulled down in 1974 and wider site was developed for housing, and Mount Tamar Special School was built on the site of the house.
