Historic Dartmoor

I don’t know why I’m doing this page apart from the fact that Riddon Ridge holds that something special, can’t say what it is but there is some magnetic draw there for me. Oh, and all the various relics from times gone by that can be found there. Even the …

“THE GREAT CENTRAL TRACTWAY – At the meeting of the Devonshire Association at Tavistock, in August 1889, Mr. Robert Burnard afforded some additional and very interesting information about this ancient road. He stated that he had succeeded in tracing it for a distance of seventeen or eighteen miles… He was …

Just under a mile away from the old ruined farm of Teignhead is Quintin’s or Quinter’s Man which today consists of a ruined cairn. Several years ago, an elderly gentleman who lived  outside Chagford related a story his grandfather used to tell him as a boy. Sometime in the late …

  I can clearly remember the day I first went in search of ‘The Pulpit’ as it was just after I began letterboxing, I had come across what was then (and still is today) one of the best letterbox stamps I had ever seen. It was a rubber cut stamp …

The Dartmoor Pounds, sounds like a family fortune but in fact they were very much features of a long gone era on Dartmoor. Normally it would be easy enough to talk about pounds or enclosures for impounding stray livestock, however in the case of Dartmoor there are several interpretations of …

On what is now the golf course stands a loan stone cross. It actually marked the route of the old monastic track from Tavistock to Buckfastleigh. In the days of the Puritans a local vicar decided this popish symbol should be removed as it was causing personal offence. So he …

In 1240 King Henry III ordered by a writ which was dated the 13th of June that the lands of his brother Richard of Cornwall should confirmed by a boundary perambulation. The lands in question were the Forest of Dartmoor and the Manor of Lydford which he had previously granted …

Whilst browsing through some early copies of ‘Transactions of the Devonshire Association’ I came across a paper written in 1876 by J. B. Davidson. It was called ‘Some Anglo-Saxon Boundaries, Now Deposited at the Albert Museum, Exeter‘ and contains details of the Peadington Landscore. According to Davidson this charter consisted …

As you drive down the A386 towards Tavistock you will come to the little village of Sourton in which there are two things you will notice. The first is the Highwayman inn and secondly, opposite on the green is a large ‘standing stone’. You may be forgiven for thinking it …

Anybody who has visited the various prehistoric ritual monuments will know that there is nothing more annoying than trekking across the moor in driving rain or mist to find them and then being unable to get a decent photograph. Well, there is one such monument you can visit that is …