South Devon Inn

It’s hard to go back in time and imagine what life was like in 1850, but if we try to picture the scene at Millbay then here we had a brand new dock development around an natural inlet which less than ten years before had been fairly unspoilt stretch of coastline. Suddenly it was a thriving dockland with that marvellous development in transport technology, the train, steaming into Millbay Station, along the ground-breaking South Devon Railway line. The first trains arrived here in April 1849 and Millbay was the main station for the Three Towns at that time. Small wonder therefore that Millbay Road, almost overnight, became a busy place and was quickly populated with a number of public houses, the South Devon Inn one of a block of five south of the railway crossing into the docks. It closed, incidentally, in February 1924.

Licensees

1857 - William Wearing
1873 - George Dyer
1877 - A Weight
1880 - P Napp
1885 - J Shepherd
1895 - William Kitt
1905 - J Davis
1907 - W Andrews
1911 - E Biddington
1914 - W Lock
1921 - John Evans
1922 - William Flynn