AROUND BRITAIN
We return to Plymouth with Jonathan Scott as the city gears up for its Mayflower 400 commemorations
Find your family in Plymouth
Plymouth is the port where many famous voyages began – from the Golden Hinde, to the Mayflower, the Endurance, HMS Endeavour and the second voyage of HMS Beagle in 1831, which carried Charles Darwin. In 1944, General Omar Bradley and the 1st US Army embarked here for the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach and Utah Beach. And it’s the birthplace of such luminaries as polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott, Victorian newspaper editor William Henry Wills and electrical engineer Jonathan Nash Hearder.
But it’s not just the home of the great and good. It’s both a thriving commercial port and one of the Royal Navy’s three operating bases, now known as HMNB Devonport. And as individuals embarking on long voyages would often decide to get hitched just before setting off, many researchers may find an unexpected Plymouth connection in their family tree.
It’s important to remember that the city’s landscape has changed over the centuries. Plymouth was formed out of three towns: Plymouth, Devonport and East Stonehouse. Although they didn’t amalgamate until 1914, for family history purposes all three need to be considered. For Devonport, the historic parish was – and still is – Stoke Damerel, but you won’t find the name on any OS map.
As an important tactical target, the Blitz changed Plymouth beyond recognition. One of the worst disasters occurred in April 1941 when the Portland Square air-raid shelter was destroyed, killing 72 people. As a result, much of the city centre and the Devonport area are vastly different now from pre-war, which can trip the unwary researcher. Although as Plymouth and West Devon Record Office (PWDRO) collections manager Louisa Blight says: “We’re here to help, so if you’re having trouble let us know!”
Arguably the city’s biggest claim to fame relates to America’s founding fathers, who set sail from Plymouth aboard the Mayflower in 1620. And to coincide with the Mayflower 400 celebrations in 2020, the city’s heritage landscape is set to undergo a total transformation.
2020 vision
For genealogists, the big news is that by 2020 the city’s archives will have moved into a new Plymouth History Centre, which will boast up-to-date facilities including exhibition spaces, interactive displays, a
restaurant, a digital map
Many researchers may find an unexpected Plymouth connection in their family tree
table and new reading room which will feature paper records, film, photos and even artefacts.
The centre will bring together the collections of the South West Film and TV Archive, the South West Image Bank, together with the PWDRO, and the collections belonging to Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and the Local Studies Library. At the same time the museum and art gallery on North Hill, which has existed there since 1910, will be transformed into a visitor attraction.
Louisa says the new centre will house a gallery-cum-research space called Active Archives, which will contain both a display of collection highlights and a range of local studies material. “This space will be adjacent to the Cottonian Reading Room where people can continue
their research journey with original source materials.”
In the meantime, the PWDRO continues to be the most important venue for the Plymouth researcher. It looks after archival resources for the Plymouth and West Devon geographical area, including parish registers, parish chest material, maps and plans, records of schools and institutions, historical directories, business records, electoral rolls and more.
The oldest document held here is a property transfer dating from the end of the 12th century from Henry, son of William de Tracy, one of the men who famously murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket in 1170. You can also view the baptism of explorer Robert Falcon Scott, dated 30 June 1868, which can be found in the parish registers of Stoke Damerel.
The Church of England parish registers for Plymouth have been available through a longstanding partnership with Findmypast since 2011 – and the site has several other Plymouth sources too (see page 83). Partnerships with sister archives and the Devon FHS means there’s lots of county material online. And by 2020 there could be even more. Louisa says: “As part of the Plymouth History Centre project we are reviewing our online offer and it is likely that further material will be available for digital access via specialist providers.”
If your ancestor worked in the Royal Navy’s vast dockyard in Plymouth, this TNA guide ( nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your- research/research- guides/royal- naval
dockyard- staff) is the best place to start your research. You could also try the Devonport Naval Heritage Centre ( devon portnhc.wordpress.com).
Local industries
If you’re researching non-naval occupations, survival of useful business material may be patchy. Louisa says: “These records are notoriously difficult to acquire as often as soon as a business goes out of business, their records end up in a skip.” That said, the PWDRO does have collections relating to famous businesses such as Plymouth Gin, the Plymouth Co-operative Society and Farley’s – of Farley’s Rusks fame.
Farley’s began life in 1857 as a baker’s shop, run by Mr Samuel Farley, at 90 Cambridge Street, Plymouth. The business changed hands and moved premises on several occasions, including a new model factory built in 1931 at Torr Lane, Peverell, Plymouth (where a supermarket stands today). The company would eventually be taken over by the Glaxo Group in the late sixties.
Visitors to PWDRO can access the Findmypast Devon Collection for free, plus there’s an on-site database called ‘All Search’ which is described as “a one-stop-shop for literally tens of thousands of name-rich records from across our collections”. The index is also the key to prison registers held here, which readers may remember contained a record of one of Samantha Womack’s ancestors who was imprisoned in Plymouth for stealing a musical instrument ( Who Do
You Think You Are? series 9). Louisa says: “Plymouth is lucky to have a range of 19th century coroners’ records which are limited in their survival in other cities and counties.
Ours have been indexed and are name-searchable via our catalogue ( www.plymouth.gov.uk/archivescatalogue).”
The PWDRO website is due to be upgraded over the next three years. It will bring services together into the Plymouth History Centre. The plan is to create a new single search function that spans all the heritage collections.
Devon FHS has close ties with the project as a member of the Plymouth Heritage Consortium. Society members power much of the indexing work behind name-rich resources such as parish registers in the area, and played an active role in the the Devon Wills Project ( genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEVDevonWillsProject), a finding aid to more than 300,000 wills from nearly 550 sources. Over the next few months, PWDRO is looking for volunteers to help index historic maps, which will be used to support the new interactive map table – a key resources within the ‘Active Archives’ space.
Of course, many Plymouth families will have links to other parts of Devon. In which case you may need to try the Devon Heritage Centre in Exeter, or the much smaller North Devon Record Office branch in Barnstaple. The Heritage Centre, which opened in 2012, is home to the archive collections of the former record office and local studies collections. It has the Diocese of Exeter and Exeter City Archives – records of the city’s administration dating back to c1100 (minutes, court rolls, charters, deeds, legal papers and more). Both record offices are overseen by the South West Heritage Trust, whose website has lots of helpful guidance ( swheritage.org.uk).