Bronze Age, when the first settlement began at Mount Batten a peninsula in Plymouth Sound facing onto the English Channel.

50 Tin trading at Mount Batten in the region inhabited by the Dumnonii continued up to the period of Roman Britain

904 Plympton, the ancient stannary town and progenitor of Plymouth, was first recorded in 904 and 'Plemestoke'; Plymstock now a suburb of Plymouth records an earlier variant of the name element. The common Saxon suffix Ton/Tun meaning town, forms the word Plympton meaning Plum Tree Town, originally recorded as Plymentun, or alternatively 'Priory Town' with a Cornish derivation.

1086 The manor of Sutton was held by the King, but Henry I granted it to the Valletort family of nearby Trematon Castle. The Valletorts in turn granted parts to the Augustinian priory at Plympton, a larger and older settlement than Plymouth, at the head of the tidal estuary of the River Plym.

1211 Plym Mouth was first used in the Pipe Rolls

1121 The Valletort's endowed the new Plympton Priory

1194 Plympton became a market town

1254 Plymouth was given a charter.In the 13th century friars arrived in Plymouth.

1254 Plympton Priory was granted a market charter

1339 A French fleet descended on the Town in 1339 and set fire to some houses

1340 French attackers, who had been successfully burning towns along the cost by surprise, burned a manor house and took some prisoners, but failed to get into the town; by the time they reached Plymouth, they had lost the advantage of surprise.

1350 Town was raided but this the French were able to destroy only a few outlying farms and possibly the hamlet of West Stonehouse

1403, the town was briefly occupied and burnt by Breton raiders A series of fortifications were built in the Tudor and Elizabethan era which include the four round towers featured on the city coat of arms; the remains of two of these can still be found at Mount Batten and at Sutton Pool below the Royal Citadel

1404 During the Middle Ages Plymouth continued to grow as a port and the town was fortified with a wall.

1435 Plymouth Castle was Built.

1501 Catherine of Aragon arrived at The Barbican.

1530 William Hawkins, who made the first English expeditions to West Africa

1577 Drake's voyage to attack the Spanish treasure ships quickly developed into his famous circumnavigation of the world

1581 Sir Francis Drake, navigator, privateer and vice admiral of the British Royal Navy remains the city's most famous resident; though born in Tavistock, he was mayor of Plymouth

1588 Sir Francis Drake insisted on completing his game of bowls to allow wind and tide to change in his favour enabling his defeat of the Spanish Armada

1591 Drakes Leat Completed.

1606 the Plymouth Company (the Plymouth Adventurers) was issued with a royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing settlements on the coast of North America.

1616 Pocahontas arrived at The Barbican.

1620 Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World, establishing the second permanent English colony in the United States of America.

1666 Citadel was builtafter the Civil War and the subsequent Restoration of Charles II

1620 21st December the ship, Mayflower, landed on the shores of Cape Cod after nearly 3 months at sea. The place at which they settled was already called Plymouth.

1628 The Barbican House and Gateway were constructed.

1642 During the English Civil War the town was besieged between 1642 and 1646 by the Royalists,

1643 Civil War 3rd Dec Rout of Royalist cavalry along Lipson Ridge. When they successfully fought off an attack by Prince Maurice's army.

1665 Construction of the Royal Citadel.

1665 Charles Church built

1688 William of Orange landed at Brixham Plymouth became the first town in England to declare support for him.

1691 The dockyards at Devonport at the mouth of the Tamar, were commissioned by William of Orange.

1696 The first Eddystone Lighthouse was erected by Henry Winstanley

1707 first brick-built house with sash windows was built at Breton Side.

1724 The railways arrived early in Plymouth, with industrial tramways serving the naval dockyard

1745 local apothecary William Cookworthy unravelled the then unknown formula for Chinese porcelain and developed the earliest English porcelain ware, Plymouth China manufactured for just two years in the town,[23] but establishing the China Clay extraction industry in the region.

1756 The third Eddystone Lighthouse, Smeaton's Tower was assembled from granite at Millbay.

1762 Royal Naval Hospital was built.

1763 Town Gates Demolished Friary Gate went in 1763, Gascoigne (North) Gate in 1768, and Frankfort (West) Gate in 1783.

1768 James Cook departed Plymouth on the first of 3 voyages to the Pacific and the southern hemisphere including his epic voyages to Australia.

1776 George Street had been laid out beyond the West Gate as a series of suburban residences.

the Theatre Royal was erected at the western end of the Street

1784 a powder magazine was constructed at Keyham Point, now part of the North Yard site.

1803 Tavistock Street built

1809 The removal of the Old Town and Coxside Gates

1809 Portland Place, Orchard Place, Park Street built.

1810 Duke Street, Cornwall Street built.

1811 Exeter Street built.

1812 construction began of the breakwater in Plymouth Sound.

1815, Napoleon Bonaparte was brought to Plymouth aboard HMS Bellerophon which remained in Plymouth Sound with the ex-emperor aboard for two weeks before his exile to St Helena.

1824 Plymouth Dock, which at the time was bigger than Plymouth town, won its own identity as the town of Devonport.

1831 Charles Darwin left Plymouth for the Galapagos Islands, where he began to develop what would become his famous Origins of Species.

1834 Many convicts too bade farewell to Blighty from here, among them the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

1835 After nearly nine years of building, the Royal William Victualling yard was completed

1848 On May 5th South Devon Railway was opened between Totnes and a temporary station at Laira Green, on the outskirts of Plymouth.

1853 a new branch of the South Devon Railway was opened from a junction at Laira to Sutton Harbour.

1859 Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and constructed the iconic Royal Albert Bridge

1863 Crownhill Fort built This Palmerston fort built to defend Plymouth against attack from the north was built between 1863 and 1872 in response to the threat from Napoleon III of France. It is now in the care of the Landmark Trust.

1868 Robert Falcon Scott born at Outlands Plymouth.

1870 The Guildhall, Law Courts and Municipal Offices were constructed.

1871 The Royal Marine Barracks built

1877 a new station at North Road was opened.

1878 The first Theatre Royal on George Street, Plymouth was destroyed internally by fire on the 13th of June.

1882 An ancient burial place was found at Newport Street, just below Stonehouse bridge, and though everything has been destroyed, reports suggest that it may have been a Roman crematorium.

1882 Smeaton’s Tower Moved to Plymouth Hoe.

1884 Plymouth Pier Constructed

1888 Biological Association building opened.

1889 HMS Drake The barracks were first occupied on June 4th

1892 a 900 feet long quay was built and the Barbican widened by some 20 feet to provide extra space for the landing of fish.

1896 Plymouth absorbed parts of the Compton and Weston Peverel

1898 Devonport expanded to take in the St Budeaux side of Weston Mill Creek and eventually. Saltash Passage, which until now had been in Cornwall.

1901 Home Park becomes Plymouth Argyle,s perminent residence.

1912 Many of the surviving crew of the RMS Titanic disaster disembarked at Millbay docks on their return to England.

1912 17 January Robert Falcon Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole only to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian expedition. On their return journey, Scott and his four comrades all perished from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold

1913 23rd Aug Theatre Royal opened.

1914 the three towns of Devonport, Plymouth, and Stonehouse were merged into a Borough.

1928 Plymouth was granted City status

1933 The road from the Barbican along Commercial Road was extended through part of the Royal Citadel to join up with Madeira Road.

1935 Lord Mayor was first elected.

1935 Tinside Pool was constructed.

1941 Apr 8th Plymouth Blitz

The evening of Monday April 21st was fine and cloudless, ideal weather for a piece of accurate bombing. Plymothians were enjoying the spring evening, totally unaware that on the airfields of France the Germans were preparing 120 aircraft for an attack on Plymouth.

How people must have dreaded 8.30pm in those days. Although Pat Twyford claims the sirens went off at about 9.30pm, Gerald Wasley says the raid started at 8.39, when the pathfinders arrived over the City and dropped their flares and incendiaries. This time the Devonport end of the City was the main target.The Royal Navy suffered that night, when ninety-six sailors were killed when a bomb penetrated the basement of Boscawen Block at the Naval Barracks. Only seventy-eight bodies were ever recovered, the remainder burnt beyond recognition. Johnston Terrace School was totally destroyed.

1941 22nd Apr An even heavier raid, if it were possible, took place the following night, Tuesday April 22nd-23rd, and once again Devonport was the main target. At around 11.30pm the Devonport Telephone Exchange was hit and the Air Raid Precaution's control centre beneath Devonport Market was destroyed, severely hampering communications. But bombs did fall elsewhere in Plymouth. That night, for example, saw the City's major disaster, when an air raid shelter at Portland Square, just opposite the City Museum, sustained a direct hit. Seventy-two people were killed outright.

1941 23rd Apr Devonport suffered yet again during the night of Wednesday April 23rd and it was remarked at the time that a fire could spread down a street as fast as a man could walk.

1941 28th Apr The enemy planes were actually over the City when the alarm was sounded and on that night the main targets were the North Yard of the Dockyard, St Budeaux, Camel's Head, and Torpoint, where forty-three sailors were killed at HMS Raleigh.

At the Royal Naval Armament Depot, Bull Point, six laboratories, a small arms ammunition store and many other buildings were damaged. The main office building received a direct hit from an high explosive bomb, resulting in the deaths of 46-years-old Mr Alexander McMillan McHutcheon, an Armament Supply Officer who came from Argyllshire in Scotland, and 42-years-old Mr Joseph Wilson, a Messenger who lived at Somerset Place, Devonport, who were both on fire watching duty.

Saltash also became a target that night and twelve fire engines were taken across on the Saltash Ferry to assist the small, local brigade.

1941 29th Apr. Devonport, Milehouse, Keyham and Saltash were the main targets the following night, Tuesday April 29th. Devonport High School for Girls received a direct hit, the gasometer at Keyham Gas Works was set alight, the Great Western Railway's locomotive number 4911, "Bowden Hall", took the blast of a bomb that landed nearby at Keyham Station, which brought rail services into and out of Cornwall to a halt, and over 100,000 books were destroyed by fire at the Central Library in Tavistock Road, Plymouth.

1943 Sir Patrick Abercrombie's published his Plan for Plymouth in response to the devastation inflicted upon the city.

1944 Jun.1st US Army embarked here for the landings at Omaha Beach and Utah Beach and after the initial bombardments some of the American battleships came to the dockyard for repair.

1945 The first estate, at Efford, was started.

1950, after much discussion, 50 acres (200,000 m2) were allocated. Devonport Dockyard was kept busy for many years refitting aircraft carriers such as the Ark Royal.

1964 Seaton Barracks built at Crownhill.

1967 the boundary was again extended to take in the neighbouring, older town of Plympton, and the villages of Plymstock and Tamerton Foliot.

1967 28th May Sir Francis Chichester returned to Plymouth after the first single handed Clipper Route circumnavigation of the world and was greeted by an estimated crowd of a million spectators on the Hoe and every vantage point from Rame Head to Wembury.

1971 40 Commando re-established itself in Seaton Barracks.

1981 Theatre Royal Built

1985 Public Secondary Schools closed its doors on May 24th. The building is now used by the University of Plymouth.

1988, to mark the 500th anniversary of defeat of the Spanish Armada the majority of the city centre was pedestrianised, closed to vehicular traffic and the city centre was landscaped and a new shopping centre named the Armada Centre marked the transition to the tourist economy as the employment at the Dockyards began to fall away.

1992 The University of Plymouth, previously a Polytechnic, gained university status.

2001 Three new stands built at Home Park.

2012 Plymouth Airport Closed.

2012 Jan The Avondale Public House Closed

2012 4th Feb New Libary opened at Plympton cos £750000