Castle and Keys

An impressive building on the corner of Prospect Row and Canterbury Street, one aspect of the prospect from this old Devonport pub at the beginning of the nineteenth century, would have been the fortification – or redoubt – at the top of Mount Wise.

An octagonal gun battery, the Mount Wise Redoubt was built on the top of the hill at Mount Wise in the late 1770s and doubtless it was this feature that inspired the naming both of the ‘Castle and Keys’ and Fort Street, which also ran off Prospect Row.

From the earliest years of the nineteenth century the redoubt housed a signalling station and well into the twentieth century it remained an important base for military communications. Now a splendid public observation tower sits within the recently restored site of the fort, however, like the inside of the original structure, the pub itself is long-gone, time having been called not long after the end of the First World War.

Licensees

1822 - John Beer
1830 - Joe Petheridge
1838 - Richard Harris
1850 - Samuel Bayley
1893 - Francis Trenery
1896 - George Terry
1901 - W Radcliffe
1907 - F Widdicombe
1913 - S Pike