Wheatsheaf

One of several Wheatsheafs around the area – there was one in Devonport and another in the ‘Golden Square’ in Colebrook – this King Street hostelry stood in the same street as the old Barley Sheaf and like that pub doubtless owes its name to the great British tradition of calling an inn by a name that could easily be identified by a pictorial sign that indicated the sale of ale – i.e. a sheaf of barley … the basic ingredient of the brew.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, when many people could still not read or write, and we first find reference to the Wheatsheaf here, there were some sixteen beer outlets in King Street. The proliferation of pubs undoubtedly a hangover from the time before Union Street was laid out, and when King Street (or Stonehouse Lane as much of it was once known) was the principal route from Plymouth to Stonehouse and Devonport.

The premises, which stood very near the railway bridge, appears to have closed, as a pub, in the late 1890s.

Licensees

1850 - William Pitchford
1857 - John Barrett
1862 - Henry Pengelly
1865 - Joseph Batchelor
1867 - George Charles
1873 - WS Strike
1877 - WC Crocker
1880 - C Williams
1885 - James Waye