Plympton

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For the suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, see Plympton, South Australia. For the town in Massachusetts, see Plympton, Massachusetts. For Bill Plympton, animator of Plymptoons, see Bill Plympton.

Plympton, or Plympton Erle, in south-western Devon, England is an ancient stannary town: an important trading centre in the past for locally mined tin, and a former seaport (before the River Plym silted up and trade moved down the river to Plymouth). Today it is a populous, significantly wealthy north-eastern suburb of the city of Plymouth of which it officially became part, along with Plymstock, in 1967.

In the last 20 years Plympton has seen considerable growth spurt and the suburban population has doubled. To help manage the growth more efficiently, Plympton has been separated into a series of separate districts, these are: Yealmpstone, Plympton-St Maurice, Colebrook, Underwood, and Chaddlewood.

A new town is scheduled to be built adjacent to Plympton which will be called Sherford. This development is expected to consist of 6500 homes and a power plant, of which construction has already been started.

Plympton still has its own town centre (called the Ridgeway), and is itself an amalgamation of several villages, including St Mary's, St Maurice, Colebrook, Woodford, Boringdon, Newnham, Langage and Chaddlewood.

[edit] History

The town was one of the rotten boroughs, and sent two MPs to the unreformed House of Commons before the Reform Act 1832 stripped it of its representation.

The town has a lot of history, being the birthplace and residence of the world renowned artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and three of his protégés. Reynolds was lord mayor of Plympton, as well as being its Member of Parliament, and the first president of the Royal Academy of Art.

Railway facilities were originally provided at Plympton — for goods traffic only — by the horse-drawn Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway, but their branch was closed and sold to the South Devon Railway to allow them to build a line from Exeter to Plymouth. A station was opened in the town on 15 June 1848. From 1 June 1904 it was the eastern terminus for enhanced Plymouth area suburban services but it was closed from 3 March 1959.