When we walk around Plymouth’s Barbican today, it can be difficult to imagine just how different this waterfront would have looked more than 380 years ago.
But during the English Civil War, these streets, quays and buildings were at the heart of a town fighting for its survival.
Plymouth had declared for Parliament, while much of the surrounding countryside was controlled by Royalist forces. From 1643, the town was effectively surrounded.
But Plymouth had one enormous advantage.
The sea.
While Royalist forces could surround the town on land, Parliament controlled the sea routes. Ships could continue to reach Plymouth with food, ammunition, weapons and other essential supplies.
The harbour became the town’s lifeline.
Without those ships, Plymouth might not have survived the siege.
A Mayor and his gunpowder
Among the people living in this remarkable waterfront community was Philip Francis, who served as Mayor of Plymouth during 1642–43.
Francis lived on Vauxhall Street, overlooking Vauxhall Quay.
And nearby was something that would have been of enormous importance during wartime – gunpowder.
With Plymouth preparing for attack, supplies of gunpowder and ammunition were essential to the town’s defence.
The fact that gunpowder was being stored so close to people’s homes gives us an idea of what life must have been like.
The war wasn’t happening somewhere beyond the town.
It was all around them.
The waterfront was filled with the movement of ships and people, while weapons and ammunition were being stored close to where families lived and worked.
John Sims and Captain Ellison
Then there were the personal disputes.
One fascinating story involves John Sims, a rector and Puritan, and Captain Ellison.
Sims had been aboard Ellison’s ship, but the two men fell out.
The disagreement was connected to religion, with Sims accusing the captain of not being sufficiently Puritan.
At a time when religious differences were deeply connected with the political conflict tearing England apart, this was a serious argument.
The dispute eventually reached a tribunal.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Ellison later encountered Sims in Plymouth and attacked him in one of the town’s streets.
It is a remarkably human story from a period usually remembered through battles, sieges and famous political figures.
People still argued.
They still fell out.
And sometimes those arguments became physical.
A building that survived
Among the buildings that help connect modern Plymouth with the Civil War period is the old Custom House on the Barbican.
Today, the historic building has a very different role, but it was already standing during the Civil War.
The Custom House was part of the working waterfront, dealing with the trade and shipping that made Plymouth such an important port.
Standing among the modern buildings of the Barbican, it is one of those rare survivors that provides a physical link with the town of the 1640s.
The people who walked through its doors would have lived through the same siege, watched the same ships entering the harbour and heard the same sounds of a town preparing for war.
The harbour that kept Plymouth alive
The importance of the sea cannot be overstated.
Royalist forces could restrict Plymouth’s movement by land, but they could not completely cut it off because Parliament’s ships controlled the waters.
Supplies could therefore continue to arrive.
For the people of Plymouth, every ship entering the harbour could mean food, ammunition or other desperately needed supplies.
The waterfront was effectively Plymouth’s connection to the outside world.
The Barbican wasn’t simply a place where ships came and went.
During the siege, it was part of the reason the town survived.
A waterfront under fire
Imagine living here in the 1640s.
You might have lived above a shop or close to the quay.
You could have watched ships arriving from the sea, heard arguments between sailors and merchants, and seen soldiers moving through the streets.
There were guns around the town and fortifications being strengthened.
There was the constant threat of the Royalists outside the defences.
And yet, somehow, everyday life continued.
People still worked.
Ships still arrived.
Goods were still traded.
Officials still carried out their duties.
And people still found themselves involved in arguments that had nothing to do with the great battles being fought across England.
That is what makes these small stories so fascinating.
The Barbican’s Civil War stories
The Civil War left a deep mark on Plymouth, but its history isn’t just about the generals and the battles.
It is also about Philip Francis looking across Vauxhall Quay, with the town’s gunpowder supplies nearby.
It is about John Sims and Captain Ellison, whose religious disagreement eventually became a very personal confrontation.
It is about the old Custom House, still standing as a reminder of the working waterfront of the seventeenth century.
And it is about the ships that kept coming into Plymouth Harbour while Royalist forces surrounded the town from the land.
These stories give us a different way of looking at the Civil War.
They allow us to imagine not just the battlefield, but the people who lived through it.
Because the Barbican was never simply a collection of historic buildings.
It was and remains a place where Plymouth’s history was lived out, one person and one story at a time.
Photographs © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post