Plymstock is located within Plymouth local authority area. Historically it formed part of Plympton Hundred. It falls within Plympton Deanery for ecclesiastical purposes. The Deaneries are used to arrange the typescript Church Notes of B.F.Cresswell which are held in the Westcountry Studies Library. The population was 1663 in 1801 3195 in 1901 . Figures for other years are available on the local studies website. In 1641/2 311 adult males signed the Protestation returns.

You can look for other material on the community by using the place search on the main local studies database. Further historical information is also available on the Genuki website.

Maps: The image below is of the Plymstock area on Donn's one inch to the mile survey of 1765.

On the County Series Ordnance Survey mapping the area is to be found on 1:2,500 sheet 124/9,10,13,14 Six inch (1:10560) sheet 124SW
The National Grid reference for the centre of the area is SX515535. On the post 1945 National Grid Ordnance Survey mapping the sheets are: 1:10,000 (six inch to a mile: sheet SX55SW, 1:25,000 mapping: sheet Explorer 108, Landranger (1:50,000) mapping: sheet 201. Geological sheet 349 also covers the area.

Illustrations: The image below is of Plymstock as included in the Library's Etched on Devon's memory website. Other images can be searched for on the local studies catalogue.

Extract from Devon by W.G.Hoskins (1954), included by kind permission of the copyright holder:

PLYMSTOCK is now swamped by suburban Plymouth. The church (formerly All Saints, now St. Mary and All Saints), is essentially a 14th century building enlarged in the 15th, when the fine bold W. tower was added. There are two excellent granite arcades, of differing styles, and a handsome rood-screen of the same period (15th century). The pulpit is late 17th century, with contemporary stairs and sounding-board. In the S. chancel aisle, which was the chapel of Harris of Radford, are some good I 7th and 18th century mural monuments of the family.

Radford, the seat of the Harrises from Edward IV's time (1461-83), was demolished in 1937 to make way for a building estate. An account of the house will be found in DA 77 (1944), 149-55. A number of small manors existed here as early as the Norman Conquest-Goosewell, Hooe, Staddiscombe and Staddon.

Oreston, now a populous suburb, has extensive quarries of limestone from which the stone for Plymouth break- water (1812-41) was taken-4l million tons in all. At Mount Batten, now a se plane station, considerable discoveries of burials, pottery, coins, and other evidence, show that a native trading settlement existed on the S. shore of the Cattewater throughout the greater part of the Roman period. The coin sequence runs, with slight breaks, from Nero (54-68) to Honorius (433). (For the details of these and other discoveries, see Worth, "Prehistoric Plymouth" in the Trans. Plymouth Institution for 1931, 1944) During excavations for the present Stamford Fort in 1864, a late Celtic cemetery was discovered on the hillside a little SW. of the fort. (A full account of the discovery is given in Archaeologia,, 40 (1866), 550-10, and a short account in V.C.H., 367-8)

Stamford Fort occupies the site of defences thrown up in 1643 by the inhabitants of Plymouth in preparation for the royalist siege, and is named after the parliamentarian commander, the Earl of Stamford.