The booming UK city which shares its name with a vast ghost town 4,000 miles away
Plymouth's Caribbean namesake couldn't be further from it and is today a shell of its former self after a series of devastating natural disasters.
Ash clouds fill the sky as Montserrat volcano erupts in 1995
Plymouth, England, has battled to become a better city than it was 20 years ago.
Various investment schemes have seen the coastal settlement enjoy new projects and green infrastructure plans.
It was this year voted by one financial advice outfit as among the best UK cities to live and work — things seem to keep getting better and better for Plymouth.
The same can't be said of its Caribbean namesake some 4,000 miles away, which today sits as a ghost town.
Plymouth was the capital of Montserrat until 1995 when a devastating volcano tore through the island and caused a mass evacuation.
Residents did initially return to the town, but a second eruption in August 1997 destroyed around 80 percent of the city and acted as the final nail in the coffin for its future.
Around 80 percent of it was buried under a whopping 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) of ash, leading to its moniker of the Pompeii of the Caribbean.
Christopher Columbus first discovered Montserrat in 1493 during his second trip to the Americas, though he didn't dock his ship.
It wasn't until 1632, when Irish exiles encountered the island, that Europeans began to settle it.
Back then, the Kingdom of Ireland was ruled by the King of England, which was undergoing a turbulent period and nearing a civil war.
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Many Irish people emigrated to the Caribbean during this period, subject to brutal oppression by Oliver Cromwell, a man widely described as England's first dictator.
Through a vast network of emigres, merchant families on the west coast of Ireland soon set up trading links with their friends and families on Montserrat, and when Oliver Cromwell finally took power from the English throne, some 10,000 people emigrated to the island.
Montserrat if often referred to as the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean given its large number of Irish settlers, and along with Labrador and Newfoundland in Canada, it is the only place outside Ireland where St Patrick's Day is a public holiday.
So ingrained is Irishness in Montserrat that a spattering of Irish words make up Montserrat Creole.
It flourished as a French then English trading post, and soon played a dark part in the slave trade.
A slow decline followed and was made worse by the Soufrière Hills volcanic eruption on July 18, 1995, which sent pyroclastic flows and ash fall across much of the island.
Volcanologists had for years been warning of the devastation that would be caused by such an eruption, especially to the capital which sat just under four miles away.
Soufrière Hills continued to erupt for weeks, and on August 21, an explosion covered Plymouth in a thick layer of ash and turned the sky almost completely black.
By December of that year 4,000 people — the entire population of Plymouth — had been evacuated.
While some returned a few months later, by June 25, 1997, another massive eruption killed 19 people and saw pyroclastic flows destroy buildings and the island's airport.
This event was the ultimate decider for Plymouth's fate, and the city has never recovered since.