Plympton’s local history week kicked off on May 14 with two entertaining historical presentations.
In the afternoon Steve Holly from the Dartmoor Tinworking Research Group gave a long talk entitled ‘Dartmoor Tin and the Plympton Stannary’. An audience of around 100 people packed into Harewood House to hear it.
Those attending heard how in 1370 one in every 20 males in the population were involved in tin working in one way or another ranging from elite master tinners to casual labourers known as spalliards.
In 1511 William Rede presented 34 ingots to be weighed and they totalled 3540 pounds, the largest in the county. The meeting also heard that by the seventeenth century William Strode had become an important local tin magnet, dominating tin production in Plympton.
In the evening local author Sylvia Guthrig staged a play at the Lutheran Church Hall about the history of Plympton in the presence of the Lord Mayor, Wendy Foster, and her consort, Councillor Ken Foster, and also the Lord Mayor’s Cadet, Flight Sargent Amber Platt.
The play was performed by members of the Laughing Angels from the Mustard Tree Cancer Support Centre at Derriford Hospital.
Those watching the play learned among other things that cider production was historically popular in Plympton and in 1763 the Prime Minister of the day, Lord Bute, became very unpopular when he proposed a four shillings per hogshead tax on cider, primarily as a means of funding the Seven Years War which had just ended. This led to uproar and Lord Bute eventually had to stand down.
“I have learnt a great deal about Plympton, things I never knew.”
During the course of the evening Mrs Guthrig presented a selection of her books to the Lord Mayor as a thank you gift. After watching the play the Lord Mayor told the assembled audience: “I have learnt a great deal about Plympton, things I never knew.”
(Story courtesy of the Plympton Podcast)
