Royal Marine

On the south (Millbay Docks) side of Caroline Place there used to be a run of some twenty properties that were originally known as Caroline Place South. No.1 – which later became No.20 when they scrapped the North/South divide was for a time in the late nineteenth century, known as the Royal Marine Hotel. Built opposite Stonehouse Hill (long since quarried away) it had been Jew’s Wine and Spirit Vaults in the 1860s, curiously enough at a time when No.1 Caroline Place North was known as Narracott & Co.’s Wine & Spirit Vaults (it later became the Posada Vaults and then the Stonehouse Wine & Spirit Vaults).

The change of name to Royal Marine was doubtless instigated by John Dorastus Chislett, a former licensee of the Laira Inn, Laira Green, and before that a Plymouth-based Royal Marine, who joined up in 1839, fought in the Crimean War and left the service in 1860. On retiring from the pub trade he took up residence in a house three doors away, until his death in 1904.

Licensees

1865 - S Jew
1880 - John Chislett