Parade Square
What Three Words: ///latitudes.
In a prominent position on Parade Square, the Monmouth Inn, or Monmouth Hotel, was first called simply the Ship. In 1823 it was owned by Joseph Drew and in 1830 by Edward Scantlebury. From the 1840s to the 1860s, it was run by John and George Reed and then by George’s widow Ann Teague Reed. It was rebuilt in the 1860s to handle the increasing trade brought into town by the railway. From the 1870s until the 1890s, it was run by John Rowe, who also worked as a carpenter and cabinet maker, and in the early years of the 20th century it was run by his son William. John Ernest Steer was running it from the First World War through to the 1930s. By this time it was a substantial hotel and could take advantage of the large space in Parade Square to provide a meeting place where the members of the East Cornwall Hunt received their stirrup cups before going off for a day’s hunting. By 1939, the owner and licensee was John McLean.
Steer's Monmouth Hotel on a Hunt day
The Inn was named after the gunship HMS Monmouth, a part of the Mediterranean fleet during the Seven Years War with France. The Monmouth was commanded by James Baron, who later became Vicar of St Bartholomew’s and Mayor of Lostwithiel. On February 28th 1758, during the Battle of Cartagera, the Monmouth engaged the French ship Foudroyant off the Cabo de Gata in southern Spain. The Monmouth lost its mizen mast but returned fire and destroyed both the mizen and main mast of the Foudroyant, which then surrendered to Captain Baron. 106 men aboard the Monmouth were killed or wounded, and the number of the Foudroyant was much higher at 190.
HMS Monmouth in action against the Foudroyant
After closing as an inn, the Monmouth was run as a restaurant called the River Brasserie. Though operating for a number of years, the amount of business was insufficient to sustain such a large building, and it had closed down by 2015.
After the closure of the brasserie, the building was derelict for many years. It was eventually acquired by new owners, who renovated and improved the building to open it as a shop. Melanie Molesworth and Julia Bird run ‘Molesworth and Bird, Seaweed Art’, selling tea towels, cushions, ceramics, cards, and pictures produced through a process of seaweed pressing. An in-shop studio illustrates the process.
Cross to the Parade gardens to