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Tales Of Dartmoor

Widecombe Sweet Seventeen

Catherine Parr, alias the noted Dartmoor authoress Beatrice Chase lived just outside Widecombe-in-the-Moor at Venton. She is best described as a typical Victorian dame and was a formidable, outspoken egotist on many matters including Dartmoor. John Oxenham wrote a novel in which Beatrice Chase was the heroine, the book was …

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Tales of the Artichoke

In 1831 Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of England stated that the parish of Christow “contained 531 inhabitants.” Nineteen years later Whites Devonshire Directory noted that there were “624 souls” living in the Parish.  It also listed that there was a school mistress/postmistress, a blacksmith, a cattle doctor, a …

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Crock of Gold 2

Just south-east of Princetown is the eminence of Royal Hill which at its height reaches 402 metres. Dotted all around the hill are various Bronze Age cairns and kistvaens. Clearly at this time the hill was regarded as a special ritual centre. Some 360 metres north-north-west of the head of …

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Moor Manslaughter

Possibly one of the most popular inns on Dartmoor is the Warren House Inn located above the old Vitifer mines. Just past the inn are some old foundation walls of which used to be the early predecessor of the inn known as the Newhouse Inn. This inn was burnt down …

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Cranbrook Castle

It is amazing the advances in archaeological technology have made all of which help to discover and research artefacts from times gone by. But who would have though nearly one hundred years ago some archaeologists employed the powers of Dartmoor’s piskies to lead them to amazing relics. How did that …

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Wicked Jan

The tale of how Jan Reynolds was taken from Widecombe church for playing cards during the service has already been told on another Legendary Dartmoor page. But who was Jan Reynolds and what led up to the fateful day when the Devil took him away? Well… “It is said that …

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Lustleigh Manners

Lustleigh – some will say it’s the prettiest village in Devon, renown for it’s old buildings, its May Fair, the venerable  St. Johns Church, the Old Cleave Inn and the nearby Lustleigh Cleave. What could sound more idyllic with its close-knit community always ready to welcome visitors with the warmest …

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Told to a Parson

Probably one of the most famous Dartmoor fiction authors, if not the most prolific, was Eden Phillpotts. Nearly every one of his works featured true Dartmoor locations intermingled with moorland traditions, folklore, local dialect, events and fictional characters. Some would say that these characters were based on actual moor folk …

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Dartmoor Bog Trotters

Following the cessation of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 many ex-servicemen found themselves homeless, out of work and penniless with no option but to tramp the country looking for employment, sleeping rough and begging. So great were the number of tramps and beggars that in 1824 the Vagrancy Act was …

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Oxenham Love Feud

“It was one of those cold evenings which so often occur in the vicinity of the Forest of Dartmoor in the month of November, that I alighted at the porch of a small public house, in the obscure village of Gidleigh. I had left my track for Moretonhampstead to view …

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