Jay Cee’s Barbers on Cornwall Street is one of those Plymouth places that has quietly become part of the city’s identity.
Believed to date back to the mid 1960’s, it has stood in the same area for decades, serving generations of local families while everything around it has changed.
For me, it goes back to 1970 being around six years old, and my dad taking me in for a haircut.
Inside, it was always busy. Often packed. Newspapers laid out. The steady buzz of clippers. Conversations overlapping across the shop.
And one moment that’s stayed with me ever since a barber pointing out to my dad and me that I had a birthmark on the back of my head. Small things like that tend to stick.
I also remember names from that time Bob Taylor, Joseph Webber, and Tony Mallafre, who used to cut my hair as a child.
Today, that continuity still carries on, with barbers including Lea Taylor, Anita Garcia Thisby, and Darren Mallafre keeping the shop going in the same spirit.
What really stands out now is what’s outside.
Step out of Jay Cee’s, turn right down Cornwall Street and within a short walk there are around ten barber shops. Modern signs, fresh interiors, the full works.
But Jay Cee’s doesn’t try to compete in the same way.
It doesn’t have to. It just carries on. Steady. Familiar. Unchanged in the ways that matter.
Because it’s not just about a haircut. It’s about memory. Routine. Familiarity.
A place that links generations of Plymouth life without ever needing to shout about it.
And that’s why Jay Cee’s still matters.
A Plymouth institution still cutting, still talking, still Plymouth.
Photographs and Video © Wayne Perry / Plymouth Post