Compasses

It stood on the north-eastern corner of what was High Street and Woolster Street, directly opposite the Valiant Soldier and was known throughout most of the nineteenth century as the Compasses. Put to a variety of other commercial uses in the twentieth century the building disappeared more than fifty years ago, however by that time its location had been redefined as the corner of Buckwell Street and Vauxhall Street.

A common enough name for a public house, the allusion is often to the compasses used by mason and joiners, however in the old part of Plymouth, in the principal street leading down to the harbour (hence High Street), the reference is far more likely to be to the compasses used by seafarers in the course of navigation. By 1873 the pub had become a newsagent’s.

Licensees

1844 - Charles Brooks
1862 - W Pollard
1867 - Margaretta Holman