Sir Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, died at Walmer, Kent in 1852 and later that year a couple of as yet unnumbered buildings were erected in the newly formed Wellington Street, Plymouth. As the end of the Second World Waris almost sixty years away now it is worth remembering that the Napoleonic Wars had only ended some thirty years earlier and several of the adjacent streets commemorated that period – Trafalgar, Waterloo and Nelson (there is a similar collection of neighbouring street names in Stoke). Like Nelson, Wellington had been made a Freeman of Plymouth and not surprisingly the great man was also remembered in the naming of a number of pubs around the Three Towns; Stonehouse and Devonport each had one and Plymouth at one time had three, one in Union Street, one in King Street and another in Wellington Street.
Prime Minister between 1828-34 Wellington had been made a Freeman in 1815, but the ‘Iron Duke’ did not receive his freedom until he made his first post-war visit here in 1819, when the crowds cheering him deemed themselves to celebrating the beginning of a long reign of peace.
