Tag Archives: Dartmoor

Here follows a delightful account of three men who visited Lydford Gorge in 1895 and who were being guided by a ‘local’ with an intimate knowledge of the terrain. Today it is easy to navigate yourself around Lydford Gorge and all that it has to offer but that has not …

  If ever you want to ‘get down’ on Dartmoor there are numerous ‘down’ to get on. It is amazing how much of interest both past and present that can be found on the Dartmoor Downs. Thornworthy Down is a prime example. It covers roughly two Ordnance Survey grids within …

History is full of sad and tragic stories of service girls who fell victim to feckless lovers and the pages of Dartmoor’s past are no exception. For instance take Kitty Jay whose forlorn grave is testament to such events. But one does not have to turn the pages back too …

Although not marked on the modern OS map the termination of the ridge of Yartor Down is known as Vag Hill. For once there can be no confusion with this Dartmoor place-name as Vag was the vernacular term for the peaty turf found on the lower commons and although inferior …

Before the days of modern machines and before the days of the steam engines one of the onerous processes of the harvest was separating the grains of corn from the husks, AKA ‘Chaff’. There were two ways of achieving this, either by threshing or winnowing. Threshing is officially defined as; …

In 1921 Eden Phillpotts published a book of Dartmoor short stories called ‘Told at the Plume’ by which he referred to the Plume of Feathers inn at Princetown. One of the stories in the book was simply titled – Rugglestone. The events in this tale revolve around the famous logan …

“The Warren House stood before them under a ragged sycamore, it was almost the loneliest inhabited dwelling in Devon. and its squat, white face peered out upon the wilderness from under a black, tar-pitched roof. The rabbit warrens spread on either hand and the dwelling lay in the protection of …

Opposite Wistman’s Wood and amidst the Bronze Age features scattered nearby are the remains of a late nineteen century rabbit warren Hemery explains how the warren was established in 1895 as a sporting warren which covered around 330 acres. James Saltroun rented the land from the Duchy and installed his …

“Evil Combe – Steep valley edges drop to boggy ground that the sun doesn’t touch, and where nothing but heather dares to grow. The wind, exhausted from its long journey across the moors, howls like the great wild dogs that are rumoured to roam these parts. Some believe the devil …

“And then the peat fires! What fires can surpass them? They do not flame, but they glow, and diffuse an aroma that fills the lungs with balm… I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that cooking done over a peat fire surpasses cooking at the best club in …