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Datuidoc Stone
Datuidoc Stone Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SX 78500 81271
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There are very few early inscribed stones to be found on Dartmoor but Lustleigh is proud to have one firmly fixed to the wall of its church. There have been various debates as to what actually is inscribed upon the stone and its origins, one thing is for sure and that is for many years the stone served as a 'threshold stone' of the church's south door. This very fact was noted on a document that was discovered in the library of Oxford's Bodleian Library in 1757. It is not known exactly how long the stone served as a doorstep to the church but it certainly displays the effects of many ancient footfalls. To discover one of the possible origins of the stone you can do no better than to look at an aerial photograph of the church. From such, one can clearly that the churchyard describes an oval shape and the roads follow its outline:
This suggests two things, firstly the churchyard was in existence before the roads and secondly its shape suggests an early Llan/Lann. The origins of such lay way back in the annals of time when Christianity first came to the county, Turner (2006, p.5) succinctly describes this process:
'"after the conversion to Christianity, traditional unenclosed burial grounds underwent a series of changes. First, a site would be enclosed with a small curvilinear boundary (sometimes known as a lann) and in time would be further embellished with the addition of a cross, a chapel, and then a parish church".
In many cases Lanns were location deliberately on pre-Christian sites in order to encourage any pagan worshippers to continue using the site but for Christian ceremonies. So Ok, it is probable there was an early church on the site of the existing one, what does that tell us? It has been suggested that the first stone structure was built around 1250, (Robinson, 2001, p.41), this however does not mean there wasn't an earlier building there previously. The stone has been examined by various experts who have suggested that it was a pre-Christian grave stone which marked a burial of between AD550 and AD1099, the average date being AD689. This would then possibly indicate that it was insitu prior to any Christian church and that it was removed from a pre-Christian burial site which once stood on the site. The other perplexing fact about the stone is that it consists of a rock geologically classified as a conglomerate when the local stone is granite, does this mean that it had been specially brought to Lustleigh? There is visible on the stone an inscription, however, due the amount of wear it suffered whilst serving as a 'threshold stone' it is in places hard to decipher. This had led to several interpretations of the precise wording which is thought to be Brittonic with two of the words referring to a male name. Since the early 1800s various historians have given their theories as to the stone, Samuel Rowe, writing in 1848 suggested that the stone was of a Romano-British origin and that it read, "David son of Conninoc", (1985, p.447). In 1861 the Rev. Dr. Thornton offered the view that it was brought from Cornwall and that the Welsh or Keltic (sic) inscription read, "David the son of Gawain". The modern consensus of opinion suggests that the wording reads: 'DATUIDOCI CONHINOCI FILI'. which it has been translated as the memorial of 'Datuidoc the son of Cohinoc.', (The Celtic Inscribed Stones Project, 2009, on-line source).
So far, so good, but then English Heritage throws a spanner in the works insomuch as their Pastscape Record (see link below) refers to the stone as the 'Writhelstan'. This they suggest may be; 'the boundary stone, called the Writelanstan, mentioned in the time of Edward the Confessor.'. Edward the Confessor reigned between 1042 and 1066 which would then put the age of the stone much later than the suggested date range obtained from the wording. The actual boundary referred to by English Heritage is that of a Saxon Estate and is found in a document known as the 'Pædington Landscore'. Here part of the boundary is described as being, 'Of dam wille in Writelan stan' or 'from the spring to the inscribed pointed stone'. It has been muted that the location of this spot is where today the 'Three Parish' boundstone stands (SX 76340 78316). But as Butler notes, this boundstone is by no means pointed, (Butler, 2003, p.305). The actual boundary in the vicinity of Lustleigh it thought to have run down from Langstone Farm (SX 75675 82916) to Yarner Wells (SX 77534 78250) from where it then went to the Writelan Stone. Sadly it is impossible to tell if the Datuidoci Stone was ever pointed due to the damage it suffered when being removed but there is no question that it is inscribed. So, if the stone was a grave marker why would a burial be made out on the open moor? During Saxon times it was not unheard of for burials to take place along boundary lines. Della Hooke states:
'An argument for the estate boundaries having been demarcated in or by pagan Anglo-Saxon times draws upon an apparent tendency for pagan Anglo-Saxon burials to have been placed upon or very close to boundaries... Such an argument must distinguish between the normal burial of the dead adjacent to settlement sites and a special fashion of interring particular people upon the boundaries of the land they held... Such a fashion could well have been represented in many early tribal societies before it was destroyed by Christianity and it may well have persisted at least into the seventh century where paganism was only slowly eradicated amongst the Anglo-Saxon elite.', (2001, p.66 - 67).
This idea is by no means only applicable to the Saxon era, many people have thought that the practice of burying the elite on tribal boundaries stems back to prehistoric times. It may well be that sometime during the Saxon times a man of high status known as Cohinoc lost Datuidoci his son who was buried on the boundary of their lands. Along come the Christians and convert the locals to their beliefs and build a church. Then the wooden structure was replaced by a stone one and somebody came up with the idea of taking the pagan gravestone and using it in the fabric of the new building, thus Christianising it? The only way of proving such a theory is to trace the old boundary line and see if there are any signs of a burial mound that could have been the last resting place of Datuidoci - sadly impossible to achieve!
Brewer, D. 2002. Dartmoor Boundary Markers, Tiverton: Halsgrove Publishing. Celtic Inscribed Stones Project. 2009. Lustleigh, On-line source - HERE Hooke, D. 2001 The Landscape of Anglo-Saxon England, London: Leicester University Press. Robinson, T. 2005. History & Architecture of the Parish Church, in The Book of Lustleigh, Tiverton: Halsgrove Publishing. Rowe, S. 1985 A perambulation of Dartmoor, Devon Books, Exeter. Turner, S. 2006 Making a Christian Landscape, University of Exeter Press, Exeter.
Pastscape Record - HERE
26/09/2009
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