This is a special and unusual blog for me as it accompanies a walk I did with Clare Balding and her producer Karen for the Radio 4 walking programme called Ramblings. Accompanying me, to share our passion for landscape, were my freinds Andrew and Chris. This blog follows the route we took through the Tavy and Walkham valley, exploring a landscape history of mining, fishing, timber and leisure.
A Walk in English Weather Posts
This third of three water walks explores the western landscapes of Tavistock, emphasizing historical water management and the town’s development around secondary water sources around Ford Street and Fitzford. Key points include the shift from the ford to a bridge at West Bridge, water-related place-names, the significance of local springs, the Fitz family’s water system, Tavistock Canal’s transport and power uses, and transformations in water quality.
This second of three guided walks in Tavistock explores the historic water system in the town’s former commercial hub, focusing on the provision of potable water. The walk covers Market Street, Lakeside, and Bannawell, illustrating how water shaped Tavistock’s landscape and history through notable locations like the Lower Fishlake Conduit, Market Street Brewery, Bannawell reservoir and most notably, the Buddle House.
In this first of three water walks in Tavistock we explore the area from the town centre, out towards Parkwood to the east. This walk of about 1.5 km showcases what the earliest medieval monastic water management to the abbey might have involved, alongside the abbey’s earliest known 12th C leat. The walk provides a chance to look at the main industrial zone of the town, where water was harnessed for power. Finally, bring a peg for your nose, because we will be looking at Tavistock’s sanitary (and unsanitary) past by considering its toilet facilities and open sewers.
In this blog I reflect on the significance of Lopwell, detailing its history from the construction of the dam in 1953 and its impact on the landscape. The narrative shifts to a tragic event in 1920 involving a pleasure boat accident. The exploration then looks at Maristow House, its notable inhabitants, and ties to West Indian slavery and colonialism. I also explore the medieval Chapel of St Martin, Blaxton Woods, Blaxton Mill, and Blaxton Quay, each of which contribute to the rich historical tapestry of the region. Finally, the discovery of the Roborough Hoard, a collection of Roman coins, hints at early Roman military activity in the area. The historical and archaeological details help to paint a vivid picture of this landscape’s important past and picturesque present.
In this third ‘Madwen’ blog, I delve further into the journey and duties of an Anglo-Saxon dairy maid on Dartmoor during transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock to upland pastures. I follow Madwen’s travel to her summer dwelling, known to us as Higher Butterworthy, her community’s preparation for the fire festival marking summer’s start, and the initial tasks on reaching her summer dwelling.
In this blog I expand on the history of the medieval Abbot’s Weir near Tavistock by exploring Rachel Evans’s detailed 1846 account in her book ‘Home Scenes’. Through her writing we get fanciful tales of a mineral-thieving abbot’s watery demise and a factually richer, less-known version of the AD 1280 dispute between monastic communities over weir-related rights. Through her nearly two hundred year old landscape account, Evans offers us a unique narrative on this once significant landmark.
In this blog I take a walk in the most southerly part of Dartmoor National Park, exploring the delightful Longtimber woods, the River Erme and the open expanses of Hanger Down.
Betsy Grimbal’s Tower, or the West Gate, is an important architectural survival of the medieval abbey of Tavistock; but is this building really what it seems?
In this blog I share an unexpected landscape finding. By chance I stumbled on an association between rushes, St John and an area of ‘holy’ fields south of Lamerton at Rushford. Revealed, I was amazed to learn, is a surprising story of the ceremonial role of the rush in medieval society adding historical and landscape richness to our understandings of olden Tavistock.
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