Engine House Inn

Standing in Cecil Street today it’s hard to imagine what life was like here in the brief period between the arrival of the railway at Millbay in 1849 and the commencement of work on the Roman Catholic Cathedral here seven years later. This contemporary map gives us some indication of how the delightfully named Engine House Inn related to the now long gone railway to the east and the site long-since occupied by the Cathedral, to the west. Meanwhile the labelling of the Melbourne Inn (still going strong today) helps provide an extra contemporary fix on the location of this Plymouth beerhouse from the past. It also shows a building that could well have been the railway-engine house in question, seen here at the eastern end of what was then known as Grosvenor Place. The Engine House appears to have closed before the First World War and the railway, went and the area to east here began to be redeveloped in the 1970s.

Licensees

1850s - T Collings
1873 - J Pantoll
1880 - J Wood
1885 - John Gorvin
1905 - E Gorvin