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WHATS IN A ........ What’s in a pub


buildings are also pubs. Dartmouth, as a town that depended on the sea for its income in more ways than one, has always been a place of transition, and like all ports, pubs became an important part of its community as it grew over the centuries. We’ll start with the oldest building in Dartmouth – The Cherub Inn, Higher Street. the building is first recorded in a document in 1380.


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For most of its life it has been a house, it spent some time as a shop, and has now – thankfully for its many regulars – been converted into the pub known as The Cherub. The building is not only one of the oldest houses in Dartmouth, it’s one of the oldest complete houses in the South West of England. Virtually derelict in the 1940s and


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THE HISTORY OF DARTMOUTH’S OLDEST INNS


artmouth has a rich assortment of historic buildings, but perhaps unusually, four of the town’s oldest


The building is not only one of the oldest houses in Dartmouth, it’s one of the oldest complete houses in the South West of England.


50s, a man with the pleasing name of Cresswell Mullett refurbished the whole building in 1958. It became a private members club, named after a type of boat apparently, not a heavenly being. Like all the pubs in this list, the building is now a mix of different repairs and adaptations made across the centuries, and only an expert could tell you which were


which, but it does contain beams from Tudor ships and is listed because of its architectural interest. It only became a pub and restaurant in the 1970s, but is a well-accepted member of Dartmouth’s pub community today. Next we’ll look at the Royal Castle Hotel on the Quay. This is the most central and one of the most familiar places for socialising in Dartmouth. Like the Cherub it is Grade II* listed because of its interesting architectural features and the Castle is full of interesting architectural features. It is made up of two houses, built next to each other in 1639 for a pair of merchants. In 1736 the one on the right hand side, as you look at it from the road, was listed as ‘The New Inn’. By 1782 a man by the name of John Browne had acquired the


other house, combined the two, and named them the Royal Castle. In 1840 many more adjustments and additions were made, including a new front to the building which can still be seen today, and the enclosure of the hotel’s central courtyard to create the hotel’s ‘Grand Staircase’. Onto Bayards Cove Inn, otherwise known as Agincourt


House, Bayards Cove. Agincourt House has the honour of being the second oldest building in the town – it dates from very close to the Cherub and some of the walls and beams are thought to date from the 14th Century. It was a home for much of its life and later became a shop, before being converted into a restaurant and, latterly, a Restaurant and Bed and Breakfast in the first decade of the 21st


Century.


Agincourt House is one of the few remaining houses with the unusual ‘gallery and back block’ arrangement. This is an unusual floor plan peculiar to south West England, in which an accommodation block on the street front was joined to a kitchen block at the rear by a gallery that spans a courtyard lying between the two. The seven stars Inn, Smith Street. The Seven Stars claims it is the oldest pub in Dartmouth, and like the Royal Castle, it was once two properties (one 16th Century, the other 17th Century) which were combined into one. The positioning of it was to


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