HANGINGSTONE HILL – if you are expecting grizzly tales of miscreants jiggling around on the end of a rope then please accept my apologies for there are none. Granted there is a large stone near the summit and it is this from whence the hill takes its modern name. As …

Many years ago there was a time when it was almost impossible to earn enough money to put food on the family table. In the long cold winter months it was even harder as there were no fruits, berries or nuts in the hedgerows. Is it therefore surprising that when …

In the Perambulation of 1240 the following directions appear: ‘et inde linealiter usque ad vadum proximum in orientali parte capelle Sancti Michaelis … and thence in line to the next ford east of the chapel of St. Michael of Halgestoke.’ This is the first documented evidence of a chapel at …

On the edge of the old Stannary town of Ashburton is an small sacred well. On my last visit it looked like an insignificant weed-choked gutter but for centuries it has been a place of pilgrimage. Sited by the old Totnes road, the tiny well is said to have curative …

I promise this is the last of the ‘colourful’ pages and concerns the colour ‘green’ and the phrase,; “green and pleasant land” couldn’t be a more apt description of parts of Dartmoor. The actual word ‘green’ derives from the Anglo Saxon word grëne which translates as growing or living, Clark …

  There are numerous place-names on Dartmoor that makes one ponder as to why they were called such. Back in the April of 2014 I received the following email which gave me cause for thought. “I have just been browsing your website with much interest and I wonder if you …

For centuries Cassiterite or tin-ore has been mined on Dartmoor. Often it was wet, cold and dangerous work and as the ‘Old Men’ of the moor began mining underground conditions worsened. It is not known how many tinners have perished down the mines but the numbers must be considerable. The …

“Smallest of villages is Gidleigh, As we turn the corner we see within an area of a few square yards the whole church-town. There is a ruined castle adjoining the dilapidated manor-house, close hugged by the little church, with a tower unusually slim when compared with its brethren. And beyond …

When is a castle not a castle? When it’s Gidleigh Castle! Although marked as, ‘Castle (remains of)’ on the OS map this is not strictly true because as the National Monuments Records explains: ‘The castle probably originated as a small fortified manor house in approximately 1300. The only remaining part …

Today, having had one of those days when you wished you had taken a ‘duvet day’ I came home and checked my emails to find the following: ‘Think the site is great and dip into it all the time. Wandered if you were going to do an article on the …