In this second blog of four about Samhain, I delve into Irish Celtic mythology and the research literature on Samhain practices, to lay the groundwork for understanding what Samhain might have been like on Dartmoor in the pre-Christian days before it became Halloween.
Category: <span>Dartmoor</span>
This is the first of a quintet of blogs on Samhain Dartmoor; Samhain being the pagan predecessor to Halloween. I am going to use the first three blogs to build an understanding of these sinister celebrations so that in blog four, I can sketch out a picture of what this might have meant in the culture and landscape of Dartmoor.
I have once again taken up the old trans-moor track, that connects Chagford in the east to Plymouth and Tavistock in the west. This middle moorland section, between Two Bridges and Postbridge, is particularly impacted by turnpiking, bringing trade and inns to the central moor; a hospitality trade still much in evidence today.
In this second blog on Mesolithic White Tor, I focus on its geology – dolerite. Dolerite, also known as greenstone, has been recognised as being important in relation to other Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites, but as yet White Tor’s dolerite seems to have gone under the radar in considerations as to what made this place special. What might research on stone use in the Stone Age tell us about the ontology of Mesolithic people at White Tor and their ‘charismatic’ stone tools?
In this blog I take my interest in Cudlip and its dairying history right back to the beginning – to the Mesolithic and a time before agriculture. I use this blog to explore why White Tor, with its early Neolithic tor enclosure, emerged as an exceptional place at the birth of pastoral farming. What was happening in the Mesolithic that helps us understand our ancestral shift at Cudlip to a cattle-based way of life, and the monumentalising of this landscape?
In this blog on the landscape of Cudlip, I explain my inspiration for wanting to explore the deep pastoral history of this place and its connection to women and dairying. This first blog sets the scene for more writing to come, exploring different stages of this landscape’s pastoral past from the Neolithic to the present, and all the incredible folklore, ritual and butter-making practice that brings alive this landscape of cows and maids.
I love landscape and I love Dartmoor. With a background in physical geography I have some understanding of geology, but a geologist I am not. I find mineral compositions, geological terminology, and geology’s buried strata, sometimes challenging to get my head around. That is why Josephine Collingwood’s new book – ‘Geology of Dartmoor: An Introduction to Dartmoor through Deep Time; its Geology, Tor Formation and Mineralogy’ – is so fantastic. Yes, Josephine knows her subject, but what makes this book so engaging and useful is her ability to communicate. The book adeptly handles the detail of Dartmoor’s geological history in a simple, yet not dumbed-down way. She provides explanations with clarity and uses abundant diagrams and annotated photographs to beautifully illustrate the concepts. All of this requires skill and effort – it is much easier to make something sound complicated than to make it sound straightforward! It has been fifty years…
In this blog I finish the route over Dartmoor, between Tavistock Abbey and Buckfast Abbey, two monasteries founded in the late Saxon. This final section revealed: churches built for the glory of God separated by over a millennia of time; caves full of pre-historic fauna; an individual who, even in death seemed to provoke fear in the local population; and elite hunting Saxons, enjoying the sport of the Buckfast landscape.
In this blog I start pulling at the thread of the name Buckfast to reveal, through other place-name and landscape evidence, what I contend is an ancient Saxon deer park, previously uncommented upon. Discovering so many ‘clues’ was thrilling and just goes to show what amazing landscape histories are sitting in plain sight.
With my recent contemplations of the river Tavy in the context of the history of British rivers, I began wondering what all this meant for the stages of development of the town of Tavistock. In this blog I use a hydrological perspective to explore, what I hope is an informed speculation, that the original Saxon abbey may not lie under the remains of the abbey as we see them today, but on slightly higher ground north of the floodplain.
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