Old Inn

Oreston has at one time or another sported a number of old inns, up until just before the Great War there were still three, the King’s Arms, the Old Ferry Boat and the Old Foresters. Today only the King’s Arms remains and without recourse to the old deeds it is difficult to locate the others although one became known as the present Minniards House, the Ferryboat was on the side of the hill leading to the Church of the Good Shepherd and the Forester’s was apparently “down yard”. Was Minniards then the “Old Inn” – which possibly inspired the naming of the late eighteenth century New Inn, a little further down the mouth of the Plym at Turnchapel?

If it was it is possible that this was the inn kept by Frances Candish, who was born in 1759 and who some sixty years later achieved a degree of notoriety by marrying, in St Andrews Church, Alexander Selkirk the Scot whose five year exile in the South Pacific (1704-1709) inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719, the year before Selkirk married Frances Candish.

Licensees

1850 - Jane Newman
1870 - Ann Hurrell