Dartmoor
A moor where Bronze Age farmers fenced their fields 3,500 years ago, a prison gave Sherlock Holmes his setting, and tin and granite built a good part of Britain.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Devon, south-west England
- Size
- About 954 square km (368 square miles)
- National park status
- Designated in 1951
- Highest point
- High Willhays, 621 m, the highest point in southern England
- Geology
- Granite formed nearly 300 million years ago
- Famous for
- Tors, wild ponies, prehistoric remains and The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Prison opened
- Dartmoor Prison, Princetown, 1809
- Famous woodland
- Wistman's Wood, a stunted high-moor oakwood
The moor that was farmed before Stonehenge's ring was finished
Dartmoor looks wild, but much of it is a landscape designed by people. In the Bronze Age, farmers marked out huge areas of the high moor with long, nearly parallel stone boundary banks called reaves. Taken together they form one of the biggest prehistoric field systems in Europe. At Grimspound, on the eastern side of the moor, you can walk into a walled settlement with the remains of around two dozen round houses. At Merrivale, stone rows run across the grass for hundreds of metres, and nobody can say for sure what they were for. The climate later turned wetter and colder, the farmers moved off, and the moor was left to heather, bog and grass.
Granite, tin and a railway made of stone
The great tors, such as Haytor, Vixen Tor and Hound Tor, are lumps of granite that survived while the softer rock around them wore away. The granite itself formed deep underground almost 300 million years ago. People have been taking things out of it ever since. Dartmoor was a major source of tin in the Middle Ages, and the tinners had their own law and their own parliament, the Stannary Parliament, which met at Crockern Tor. Granite became the next big business. Stone from Haytor went into the new London Bridge, opened in 1831, and into the British Museum. In 1820 the Haytor Granite Tramway was built to carry it down to the canal, and its rails were cut from granite too. You can still follow the stone tracks across the moor.
How a prison and a ghost story made the moor sinister
Dartmoor Prison at Princetown opened in 1809 to hold prisoners from the Napoleonic Wars, and later American sailors captured in the War of 1812. In April 1815 guards fired on prisoners and killed seven, an event known as the Dartmoor Massacre. The moor's gloomy reputation was fixed in 1901–02, when Arthur Conan Doyle serialised The Hound of the Baskervilles. He had heard Dartmoor folklore, including tales of spectral black dogs and of a wicked squire, Richard Cabell, said to be hunted by hounds after his death. Conan Doyle turned them into a Sherlock Holmes mystery. His Grimpen Mire is fictional, but the moor has plenty of real bogs that look much like it.
Ponies, commoners and a very old way of life
The famous Dartmoor ponies are not wild in the strict sense. Each one belongs to a farmer, and many graze under ancient commoners' rights that allow livestock on the open moor. Sheep, cattle and ponies are what keep it open and stop it turning to scrub. Wistman's Wood, high above the West Dart River, is a stunted oakwood growing among moss-covered granite boulders. It has a reputation for being gnarled and eerie, which suits the moor perfectly. The village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor is known across the world for the folk song Widecombe Fair, with its Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
A hobby invented with a bottle
In 1854 a guide called James Perrott set up a bottle at remote Cranmere Pool so that visitors could leave their cards. It was the start of letterboxing, a hunt for hidden boxes with clues, stamps and logbooks, and one of Britain's oldest outdoor pastimes. Thousands of boxes are now hidden around the moor. Dartmoor became a national park in 1951. Parts of the northern moor are Ministry of Defence firing ranges, including the area around High Willhays, so red flags and warning notices are something to look out for there. The weather changes quickly, the mist can come down within minutes, and the moor is better treated with respect than with bravado.
Notable people
- Arthur Conan Doyle
- Richard Cabell
- James Perrott
- Bertram Fletcher Robinson
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
The Jurassic Coast
Published
Walk 95 miles of English coastline and you travel through 185 million years of Earth's story, from desert dunes to Cretaceous seabeds, in a single afternoon's stroll per epoch.