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.
A Walk in English Weather Posts
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.
In this second in a series of blogs based around a 9th century Anglo-Saxon dairy maid called Madwen, we follow her on the second part of her short journey from the Tavy, through to the sinister White Tor, a place which she fears. On this route we learn a little of how the Anglo-Saxon landscape was divided, and how it might have looked differently because of fewer enclosure walls. I will also explore some initial thoughts about how the dairy landscape might have been managed – the role of Smeardon (named after butter) and the possible subsequent development of abbey ‘vaccaries’.
Using a different approach to my normal writing, in this blog I imagine a fictional historic character called Madwen, a 9th century Saxon dairy maid. In this first of a series I follow Madwen from her home at Hurdwick on the first stage of her journey for a season of summering and dairying on Dartmoor. I use this made-up narrative to help me explore transhumance, dairying and dairy folklore.
In this blog I discover another fish weir! Who knew weirs could be so exciting? This is not just any weir, this is the medieval Abbot’s Fish weir on the Tavy, once controlled by Tavistock Abbey but transferred to Buckland Abbey in 1278 AD. In fact, this weir probably furnished the Tavy for the best part of a millennia. The weir was notoriously the cause of a fight in 1280 AD, where bows, arrows and blood were drawn. In this blog I share details of its remains, including a whopping slab of stone the size of an estate car, and reveal its forgotten whereabouts.
At last! In this blog I finally reach Chagford, on the final stage of the old highway across the moor from Plymouth to this lovely eastern Dartmoor market town and staging post to Exeter. In this route I descend from open moor, back into the security and constriction of the Devon lanes and head for the town, which for hundreds of years has been a place of hospitality for a weary traveller.
In Tavistock there is a shady riverside walk on the far bank of the Tavy known as St John’s. It has an amazing history of having once housed a chapel, hermitage, ‘pest house’ and holy well. Apart from a well, nothing remains of this past, and it is fair to say very few people have any idea of its yesteryears.
In this blog I take its known history and, using new map evidence, take a more in-depth landscape look at St John’s to reveal: where the medieval road used to go; a previously un-recorded farm; a mysterious summer-house; a picturesque tor by the river that has been obliterated; and the ‘real’ St John’s Well.
I also find not just one, but three potential reasons, why St John’s is so perfectly named.
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