Dartmoor Places

Here’s a question for you – have you ever been sat at your favourite spot on Dartmoor and wished that you owned it, (I know I have on many occasions)? Here’s another question; if you did own it what kind of public access would you allow? Would you follow in …

There is an early placename of Soueston, in 1771 the Recovery Rolls documented the place as North Souson, in 1809 Mudge’s map of Devon shows it as South Stone Farm and today it’s known as Soussons. The English Place-Name Society suggests that the name could originally have meant “at the …

  Walk out from Postbridge along Drift Lane and you soon come to the bottom of Broad Down (Broadun) and then you are faced with a stiff climb to its summit, back in the day this particular ascent was know as ‘The Bastard’. Probably the reason it acquired this name …

  Spitchwick, the name sounds as if it would have graced any Dickens novel but it actually refers to the ancient Manor. Pre-conquest the manor was owned by Earl Harold but the first documented evidence of it can be found in the Exchequer Domesday Book of 1086 where it’s listed …

  Ever since mankind reverted from hunter gathering to permanent settlement there was a need to define tribal lands. As time progressed the ‘lands’ became manors, parishes etc and there was always a need to claim the rights of ownership which distinguished these lands from their neighbours. On Dartmoor the …

  “Meldon Viaduct hung like a spider’s web spun of silver above the mists of the gorge. Arms fell from it to the darkness below, and the whole, fraught with night’s own magic, possessed a beauty of its own —a beauty higher than the inherent beauty of perfect adaptation to …

Amongst other claims to fame the small rock pile called Bottor Rock is arguably the most eastern of Dartmoor tors. The small pile can be found just south-west of the tiny village of Hennock and stands at a height of 793 feet. If you read most of the topographical Dartmoor …

  No visit to Dartmoor is complete without a visit to the Museum of Dartmoor Life which is conveniently located in the centre of Okehampton. Here you can step back through millennia of Dartmoor’s history by way of exhibits which show how they lived, where they worked, how they played …

“Lower Meavy Bridge was once a picturesque ivy-covered stone arch bridge but was replaced by an iron construction in 1909, and was from then known as Iron Bridge.” Pauline Hemery, The Book of Meavy, p.21. Dartmoor has many fine examples of early bridges all of which carried ancient routes used …

Both Mangersford and Manga Rails (which sound a bit like a 70s porn star) are  landscape features located at and near to an old fording place on the North Teign river. As to the ford itself, William Crossing notes;  “We shall also pass a fording place, which may possibly be …