‘No labourer whatsoever undergoes greater hazard of peril or danger, nor in hard or coarse fare and diet doth equal him: bread, the brownest; cheese the hardest; drink the thinnest; yea commonly the dew of heaven; which he taketh either from his shovel, or spade, or hollow in his …

It has been argued that on Dartmoor tin has been extracted since prehistoric times although there is at the moment very little evidence to back this up. The earliest form of tin extraction was by means of working the rivers and streams for alluvial Cassiterite from which the tin was …

  Every May the Ten Tors Expedition takes place on Dartmoor. This is probably one of the most famous of the annual Dartmoor walks and always makes the local television news. There are three levels of challenge which are over one of 26 specific routes, the bronze routes are 35 …

Throughout the 18th century there was a dearth of small change coinage throughout Great Britain due to the fact that the mint could not keep up with the demand for the lower denomination coins. To confound the problem there were also numerous forgeries in circulation which tended to lose people’s …

In the summer of 1975 a group of archaeologists from Exeter University were excavating the remains of an old blowing house high up the Walkham Valley. Having located the feature an excavation trench was dug and a possible leat was found. To enable the full extent of its course to …

When talking of the ‘Take Off Stone’ you could be forgiven for thinking it is something connected with NASA and Space Shuttles. But no, it is/was a small insignificant stone that stands beside the A386 Tavistock to Okehampton road and which hundreds of people drive past every day. During the …

“Fire sent forth great clouds of smoke upon the waste, wind running ripples of flame crept along before the wind. Behind them extended a gloomy mantle of ash and char; before them streamed their banners of smoke. These spring fires, or “swaleings,” had been deliberately lighted that furze and heather …

On the 12th of April 2012 the Daily Mail printed the following; “But stiles could soon be removed on Dartmoor – after ramblers claim some walkers are becoming too fat to get over them“. Many of the other national newspapers carried similar stories and very soon the topic became a …

“The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.” You may have heard of the famous novel ‘The Thirty Nine Steps’, well this is the famous ‘Thirty Two Steps’ of Dartmoor’. To some they may at times have been proven to be infamous and resulted in …

‘When the mistrals were forbidden to journey from place to place, by the act of 1597, they settled down in country places, married, took to some trade, or became workers on the land, and supplemented their wages from what they could pick up at Whitsunales, May-games, Sheep-shearings, Harvest Homes, Christmas …