Plympton Erle
| Plympton | |
|---|---|
 Looking down on part of the town from the castle |
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 Plympton
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| Plympton shown within Devon | |
| Population | 29,899 (2011 Census) |
| OS grid reference | SX542561 |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | PLYMOUTH |
| Postcode district | PL7 |
| Dialling code | 01752 |
| Police | Devon and Cornwall |
| Fire | Devon and Somerset |
| Ambulance | South Western |
| EU Parliament | South West England |
| UK Parliament | |
Plympton, or Plympton Maurice or Plympton St Maurice or Plympton St Mary or Plympton Erle, in south-western Devon, is a populous, north-eastern suburb of the city of Plymouth of which it officially became part, along with , in 1967. It was 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).
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, Newnham, Langage and Chaddlewood.
Although the name of the town appears to be derived from its location on the River Plym (compare, for instance, Otterton or Yealmpton), this is not considered to be the case. As J. Brooking Rowe pointed out in 1906, the town is not and never was sited on the river. The earliest surviving documentary reference to the place is as Plymentun in Anglo-Saxon charter S380 dated to around 900 AD, and this name may be derived from the Old English adjective plymen, meaning "growing with plum-trees". So Plympton would have the meaning "Plum-tree farm". Alternatively, Cornish derivations also give ploumenn meaning 'plum' and plo(b)m meaning 'lead' - possibly related to Latin plombum album ( 'British lead') or tin. The local civic association, however, suggests an alternative derivation from the Celtic Pen-lyn-dun ("fort at the head of a creek").
By the early 13th century, the River Plym was named from a back-formation from this name and nearby . This later led to the naming of the fishing port created at the river's mouth (Plymouth, originally named Sutton) when the river estuary silted up too much for the monks to sail up river to Plympton any longer.
Near Plympton is the Iron Age hill fort of Boringdon Camp.
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