History

Plymouth’s fortunes turned on movement — of ships, of trains, of people. The first steam train reached the port at Millbay in 1849, and within a decade the harbour was a gateway for ocean travel as well. The railway and dock interests saw that a city receiving the world needed a hotel to match, and the Plymouth Hotel Company built one: the Duke of Cornwall, raised between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of around £40,000.

For a century and a half the hotel has watched the great moments of the port pass through its doors. In 1912 it took in survivors of the Titanic brought ashore at Plymouth. During the Second World War, when the Luftwaffe reduced much of central Plymouth to rubble, the Duke of Cornwall came through with little damage — one of the few Victorian landmarks left standing in the rebuilt city.

Ownership has changed with the times, most recently passing to a hotel-management group in 2021, but the building’s role has not. John Betjeman, the great champion of Victorian architecture, ranked it among the finest examples of Victorian architecture in the country, and the city has kept it as a point of pride.