Bridge Inn

Always a busy thoroughfare there is nothing like the amount of pedestrian traffic today over Stonehouse Bridge as there was 100 years ago. Built in the late 1760s to the designs of the engineer here to construct a lighthouse on the Eddystone Reef, the bridge is one of a number John Smeaton’s bridges that are still standing today. Widened some 200 years later and shortly afterwards infilled on the landward side, the bridge crossing, like the ferry crossing before it, would certainly have been seen as a commercially attractive proposition to potential publican. Not surprisingly there were a handful of pubs dotted around the Stonehouse end of the bridge, the proximity of a local brewery also helped. A casualty of the Second World War, the Bridge Inn – No.1 High Street – was owned for many years, pre-war, by George Wadlan.

Licensees

1867 - William Bridgeman
1877 - J Rule
1882 - Samuel Waymouth
1900 - Joseph Williams
1914 - George Wadlan
1933 - Fred Richardson
1941 - William McIntyre