A FEW NOTES ON OLD PLYMOUTH. 415 
with me that this is no improvement. Those who are answerable 
for these changes ignore the history of their own town. They 
should have been content to alter some of the grand modern names 
of streets, calling plain places by plain names, instead of after 
kings, queens, and regents. How misleading to a foreigner, for 
instance, some of them must be. ‘‘ Pray direct me de nearest way 
to King Street; I wish to see where de grand people live.” 
There are still some Elizabethan houses in Plymouth. Most of 
them have been mutilated and defaced in the vain attempt to make 
them look modern. The grand old house in Notte Street remains 
intact, in almost all its original external beauty. Isolated it cer- 
tainly is; but like an oasis in a desert of stucco and houses barren 
of interest. So famous has this house become, that an artist this 
year (1878) has come from the North of England expressly to 
make measured drawings of it, with the view of producing an 
exact copy of this finely-proportioned and picturesque building. 
Quaint fragments of ancient Plymouth are occasionally to be 
found in courts and alleys branching off from some of the old 
thoroughfares of the town. Mr. Worth, in his interesting Graphic 
description of Plymouth (March, 1878), directs attention to an 
Elizabethan court off Briton Side, and to a curious tablet, a relic 
of the Armada days, on one of the house-fronts, having on it ‘‘ the 
arms of Spain, Castile and Leon quarterly, with an escutcheon of 
pretence bearing three flewrs-de-lis, and surrounded by the collar of 
the golden fleece.”’ 
Later in the seventeenth century, and after the siege, a good 
many houses must have been built in Plymouth, but of these there 
are few existing examples; Messrs. Hawker’s business premises 
bear date on a granite slab, 1655. Several houses of the reign of 
Queen Anne remain, and nearly all the buildings of that period 
have the dates on them, either on a slab or, more commonly, on the 
archstones of the windows. On the keystones of a brick house in 
Briton Side, a little to the west of the “ King’s Arms,”’ is the date 
1706. In Batter Street there is a house (formerly the Manse to 
the Chapel adjoining) with the date 1708 on four keystones, and 
the initials ‘‘I. M.”’ on the keystone of the central window. In 
Treville Street, adjoining the entrance to the new Board Schools, 
are some remarkable timber-fronted houses, having—with their 
overhanging eaves, projecting more than three feet, and dormers in 
the roof—quite a Continental look. On a corner-stone are the same 
