12 November: Plymouth

On this date in 1439 Plymouth became the first town to be incorporated by the English Parliament. Plymouth is a city located 190 miles (310 km) west-south-west of London, in the county of Devon. With a population of about 264,200 it is the 30th-most populous built-up area in the United Kingdom and the second-largest city in the South West, after Bristol. Here are a few things you might not know about Plymouth.

1. A fair number of Plymouth's claims to fame involve people sailing away from it, probably the most famous of these being the Pilgrim Fathers, who left there in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. They weren't the first people to sail from Plymouth looking for a new life in the New World - in 1584 Richard Grenville left to set up the Roanoke Colonies. Captain Cook left Plymouth on the Endeavour in 1768 on his first voyage. Charles Darwin left Plymouth Barbican on The Beagle in 1831, and Napoleon left Plymouth on the Bellepheron in 1815 on his way to exile in St. Helena. In more recent times, Sir Francis Chichester left Plymouth in 1966 to circumnavigate the world single-handed.
2. Plymouth is home to the oldest working Gin distillery in England which opened there in 1793, and the world's oldest working bakery, Jackas Bakery. It was also the birthplace of the porcelain industry when local pharmacist, William Cookworthy, became the first person in Britain to work out how to make hard porcelain having found china clay in Cornwall.
3. It has an extinct volcano. A small island in Plymouth Sound called Drake's Island was once the tip of it, and is made of volcanic tuff and lava.
4. Plymouth has the second largest fish market in the UK, which deals up to 60 tons of fish a day, and the largest public aquarium, which attracts 300,000 visitors a year. The aquarium boasts Britain's deepest tank, which holds 2.5 million litres of Water.
5. Plymouth Barbican has the largest concentration of cobbled streets in Britain.
6. Sir Francis Drake was born in in the nearby town of Tavistock and was mayor of Plymouth. It was here that the famous story of him playing bowls when the Armada was sighted took place. He insisted on finishing the game before engaging in battle. A lesser known fact about Francis Drake is that he built a leat to transport water to the town from the River Meavy on Dartmoor 14 miles away, making Plymouth the first town in Britain to get fresh water from outside its boundaries.
7. Other famous people from Plymouth include Sir Joshua Reynolds (first president of the Royal Academy), Captain Bligh (of Bounty fame), Arctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, former Labour leader Michael Foot, Artist Beryl Cook, dancer Wayne Sleep, footballer Trevor Francis, newsreader Angela Rippon, comedian Dawn French, swimmer Sharron Davies and diver Tom Daley. The first ever female Member of Parliament, Nancy Astor, represented the constituency of Sutton in Plymouth.
8. On the Hoe stands a lighthouse, Smeaton's Tower, which was built from parts of an Eddystone Lighthouse which was dismantled in 1877 and moved piece by piece to the Plymouth Hoe. It was revolutionary in terms of lighthouse design in its time, designed by civil engineer John Smeaton, who based his design on the shape of an Oak Tree.
9. Plymouth’s Roman Catholic Cathedral was designed by Joseph Hansom who also designed the world’s first taxi - the 'Hansom Cab'. Plymouth's other religious buildings include a Grade II listed synagogue built in 1762 and Charles Church, which was partially destroyed during the Second World War which has been left as it was as a monument to the bombing of the city during the war.
10. The nursery rhyme Old Mother Hubbard was written in Yealmpton near Plymouth. Sarah Catherine Martin wrote it while staying in Kitley House, now a hotel. While the poem was supposedly inspired by the housekeeper of Kitley House, some believe it was political satire, a carefully hidden criticism of Wolsey and Henry VIII.

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