Drove to Doccombe this morning for a walk on the moor at Mardon Down. We were up quite high and could see a long way over Dartmoor. (Moretonhampstead and several other villages in the valley and Haytor and Hound Tor to the south. On the walk, we came across two stone circles. The Mardon Down stone circle is the biggest on Dartmoor with a diameter of 38m. The site would have been impressive in its day but is now fairly dilapidated. The circle would have originally had around 61 stones, of which 6 remain upright and another 16 lie roughly in place. Along the ridge a little further is a well-preserved ring of large slabs and further down the slope is the Headless Cross or Maximajor Stone. Fable has it that this stone is the remains of a friendly giant, Maximajor (quite a story – worth googling). As far as the 'Headless Cross' is concerned, there are apparently no visible signs of the stone ever having arms so it is more likely just another standing stone.
The history of the standing stones (also called orthostats, liths, or more commonly megaliths) is a bit of a mystery. They’re known to be of Bronze Age (2,300 - 700BC) and along with stone circles are thought to be sites of ancient religious ceremonies and/or meeting places. Many of the standing stones were later taken and used as building material, gateposts, walls or were used (often after being inscribed) as parish boundaries or markers of some sort - the reason so many of them are found near the roadside.
From here we drove on to Princetown where the main National Parks Office is. We were impressed with the Dartmoor display at the office but Princetown itself appeared to lack the character of the other villages we have been in. The town has been there since 1785 when Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, leased a large area of moorland from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, hoping to convert it into good farmland. He encouraged people to live in the area and suggested that a prison be built there. He called the settlement Princetown after the Prince of Wales. Princetown is best known as the site of Dartmoor Prison where there are still 600 prisoners in the jail and also a jail museum.
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| Princetown |
From Princetown, we travelled a little further west towards Tavistock to more Standing Stones at Merrivale. This site includes a 3.8m standing stone and two stone avenues, running parallel to each other beside a leat (a man made stream).
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| Stone Avenue - Merrivale |
To the south of the avenues is a large kistvaen (burial chamber) which was probably originally co
vered by a burial mound. In this kistvean a flint scraper, a number of flint flakes and a whetstone (for polishing metal) were found.
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| Kistvaen (Burial Chamber) |
In the Bronze Age, it was usual to bury jewellery, axes, arrowheads, and pottery with the dead. The 'lid' of the cist was broken in two, apparently by a farmer, sometime in the past, who made a gatepost out of it.
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| 3.8m Standing Stone |
Also in the area, one can see evidence of granite quarries and their spoil tips. Quarrying ceased in the area in 1997.
Back to Dunsford briefly and then off to the Teign Valley in for dinner. Staff were wearing t-shirts with “It’s not over till
(sic) the fat b*****d snores”, presumably a not so flattering reference of the boss. The meal was nice, they even had a raspberry sorbet dessert for Jill.
