Basket Ope, Plymouth - 27 December 2019

Plymouth was heavily bombed in the Second World War and developers destroyed a lot of what the conflict had not but there still survive many buildings and areas of great interest. Without a local guide, each produces questions which I have only partially answered. This short road, wide in the present day, is called Basket Ope. The buildings in this view, the east side of the Ope, are the backs and sides of properties in the narrow Barbican Court. According to one account, Ope is a word in street naming unique in Devon to Plymouth itself. The city has many Opes and the word is thought to be nothing other than a contraction of 'open' or 'opening' and would have applied to a narrow street or alley giving into a wider thoroughfare. In this picture, Vauxhall Street is on the left.

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