A Walk Around Double Waters with Radio 4’s Ramblings

The confluent combe, where the rivers Walkham and Tavy join at Double Waters, is one of my favourite places. Whether walking from the Buckland side, where I grew up, or from the Tavistock side, where I now live, both routes involve a descent from unobstructed downland, into an intimately wooded valley bottom. From West Down, where this walk starts, attention is lured, across bracken and hawthorn, into the shady deciduous greenwood; a direction my feet are always drawn. Not that the downland is any lesser – here is openness, here is sun, here is panorama – providing a complementary topographic yin-yang balance to the valley floor.

Exploring and trying to understand landscape is important to me, sometimes walking somewhere new, but often revisiting a place known well to me. Combined with poring over modern and historic maps, and ferreting about in books and digital resources, I lose myself and gain a gratification I find hard to put into words.

Some of the enjoyment certainly comes from seeing the landscape as an historic puzzle. Walking, research and discussions with like-minded friends unlocks new knowledge and understanding about a place. I like the intellectual and detective challenge of it. But the other component of this pleasure comes from the intimacy of the relationship I gain with landscape and place. Just as we value relationships with people, my walking, researching and writing about landscape gives me a feeling of belonging and connection.

Whilst I have already written some blogs about this landscape, this one is special, because it has been written to accompany a walk I did with Clare Balding and producer Karen for the Radio 4 programme, Ramblings. Accompanied by friends, Chris Smart and Andrew Thompson – who share my passion for the lumps, bumps, and meanings in landscape – we set off for a walk from West Down, near Tavistock, into the valley where the rivers Tavy and Walkham meet.  

In this blog, as well as chronicling the walk in words and pictures, I am going to explore ‘7 Interesting Things’ that we talked about on the way, to give a sense of its essential qualities. In particular, I want to convey this valley, not just as a place of mineral exploitation (for which it is best known), but also as an historic fishery, a valuable woodland, and a place of leisure.

Helping with this landscape story I am going to use the observations of two Tavistock women walker-writers from early 19^th C – Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883), and Rachel Evans (1812-1883)[1]. In her book ‘Wanderers: A History of Woman Walking’ (2020), Kerri Andrews features ten women writers who wrote about their ramblings (incidentally, citing Clare Balding in her appendix as another influential female walker). Her work is a counterbalance to the many books on the history of writer-walkers that, through the choice of examples, portray the history of walking for leisure as an almost exclusively male activity. In Tavistock we are therefore fortunate to have the legacy of these two women writers, both in what they have to tell us about the historic landscape, and what they contribute to our understanding of the nexus of women, walking and writing.

We began on the thin acidic slopes of West Down which face the sunny south. Covered in bracken, this plant grows aggressively, especially through underground rhizomes. Problematic for reasons such as its inhibition of woodland regeneration, and its harbouring of ticks, bracken does have positives. Underneath its canopy can be found abundant violets; food for the larval stage of the nationally important but declining population of high brown fritillary butterflies[2].

Just as Karen, the Ramblings producer, was about to record the opening dialogue, up started the loud vibrations of a tractor with its bracken-beating attachment. The noise focused our attention and led to a discussion with Chris about the harm bracken causes to archaeology as it obscures archaeological sites, and damages below-ground deposits[3].

Descending, we walked through the sweep of a topographic bowl to a threshold, where the valley slopes steepened, a spring issued, and the oak woodland commenced. The divide is palpable; light levels dropped, vistas shortened, and the soundscape shifted. Longer distance sounds were replaced by the close-calls of birdsong and the burble of water, gathering in its gravity-impelled quest for the river.

Passing a small pocket of wet-woodland, and a mine adit (a horizontal mine passage), we headed for Double Waters, where the Walkham and Tavy join their fluid forces. Sentinel over this confluence is a mass of rock which Bray, writing in 1836, says that she and her husband called ‘Goat Rock’.

Double Waters is a picturesque spot, enlivened with the rush and organic aroma of the peaty waters meeting. From Double Waters, where river swimmers are often found in the vitalizing waters, and where we did indeed see a lady taking the plunge, we crossed the River Walkham by a wooden footbridge known as a ‘clam’.

1. The Clam Bridge

Beyond Devon the term clam, for a wooden footbridge, is barely known, but in these parts, we have abundant examples. The Oxford English Dictionary cites it as a dialect word for a simple plank or stone over a brook to fashion a basic crossing, suggesting it is apparently short for ‘clamber’.

Bray, writing in the 1830’s, describes this as a ‘wild romantic spot’ with a ‘miniature alpine bridge’ consisting of ‘a single plank, with a light piece of wood extended as a handrail’.  She recounts two tragedies: that of a poor girl and that of a farmer, who, on separate occasions, both drowned after they fell from the clam. Emotionally connecting with this folklore of place she then describes her own visceral encounter on the clam:

Heading with the flow we took a wooded path through mine relics and over spoil heaps, weathering into the undergrowth; signs this rural setting used to be a busy locus of shafts, capstans, dressing floors, stamping mills and water-wheels. A place of disturbed earth and reverberant machinery, the mine here would have been busy with men, women, children and pack animals, all employed to capitalise on the demand for copper.

2. The Virtuous Lady Copper Mine

Pocking the valleys and hillsides of this countryside are the copious scars of old mines. Cornwall and Devon are well-known for being rich in elements such as tin, copper, lead, silver and arsenic. These wealth-giving veins formed in the hydrothermal fluids which cooled in the fissures of the rocks that surrounded the Cornubian batholith, a huge intrusion of granite responsible for areas such as Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor [1].

The most renowned of these mines in this valley is the Virtuous Lady copper mine. Reputedly, but unproven, this mine dates to the Elizabethan era, and is named after ‘the virgin queen’, but it was certainly recorded as operating by 1724. For those interested in its history, you can do no better than Tracy Dearing’s Virtuous Lady Mine website.

For this blog I don’t want to get into the ins and outs of the mine history, but I do want to use it as an opportunity to connect to the writings of Rachel Evans and Anna Bray as well as the long history of this valley being used for leisure. This is because the Virtuous Lady mine, according to Bray “is the most celebrated mine in Devonshire for the variety and singularity of its cabinet specimens”, of which she was referring to its multi-coloured and multi-formed crystals and minerals. Both Bray and Evans describe some of these many specimens, praising the ‘fairy boxes’ and ‘ladies slippers’ which “the learned and curious from all parts have regarded with surprize these grotesque specimens of nature’s workmanship.”[5]

Interest in going underground to see the minerals was an early form of tourism, particularly popular in the late 19^th century, after the mine had closed, right through to the 1970s. At this time it was still possible to be given a tour of the caverns and remains of the mine workings by the redoubtable Peggy Oxenford, who lived for many years at the overlooking former mine captain’s cottage[6]. Presumably, by this stage, there were few fine geological specimens to observe as all the good geological swag would have been pocketed long ago[7]. If you would like to see some examples of the strange and wondrous minerals collected from this mine then I recommend the collated digital gallery for the Virtuous Lady by mindat.org.

“Peggy Oxenford led a group of us school lads on a tour of the mine in the late 60s. After going through a “squeeze hole” I recall that we entered a chamber which was festooned with quartz crystals, a young acquaintance of mine visited a few months ago and said it was now virtually bare. On our frequent swimming trips it was always exciting to find iron pyrites amongst the pebbles and shingle at the river’s edge and convince ourselves that we’d found gold. With the air training corps (ATC) we’d carry out night manoeuvres on West Down and end up camping out under the stars. I still go there, both from Grenofen and West Down, and never tire of it.” – Dennis Martin

Image: Peggy Oxenford inside the Virtuous Lady Mine. Image credit – Thorington Archive, Tavistock Museum.

3. Mine spoil and Arsenic

Despite the Virtuous Lady being liquidated in 1873, piled beside the Tavy, some of its spoil heaps, one hundred and fifty years later, are still unvegetated. This is almost certainly because its waste contains high levels of toxic arsenic.

Outside of the region, arsenic mining is not well known, but it is the case that some of the mines of West Devon, pivoted to arsenic after copper prices fell and production became financially unviable from the 1860s. Two of the largest copper mines in the world in the 19^th century – Devon Great Consuls (Tamar Valley) and Wheal Friendship (Tavy Valley), in their most productive years, produced arsenic merely as a biproduct. Whilst some arsenic was used in manufacturing green dyes, and, astoundingly, in some make-up and medicines, it was not until the 1860’s, when arsenic began to be used in pesticides in North America, thus opening a new and large market.

There is no evidence that arsenic was ever purposefully extracted and processed at the Virtuous Lady Mine. Unlike the bigger Devon Great Consuls and Wheal Friendship mines, perhaps the economics of switching to arsenic were too prohibitive in this location, for those big mines were well-connected via rail and canal links, unlike the Virtuous Lady, tucked deep in a steep valley.

Despite no evidence of arsenic mining here, the spoil heap is a warning. Sparsely vegetated with stunted birch, oak and heather, with acid loving pine and bilberry around the margins, this is no place to have a picnic[8]. However, so long as you keep your fingers out of your mouth, it is a great place to look for attractive minerals. Whilst all the ‘cabinet quality’ specimens have gone, it is still fun to hunt for the shiny gold-coloured crystals of arsenopyrite.

Having discussed with Andrew some of the history of the mine, and briefly scanned the ground for shiny crystals, we left the poisonous spoil and were just about to scamper down a slope to the river, when we stopped in our tracks. Stood in waders, elegantly casting his fly on a cobbly sweep of the Tavy, was an angler, unaware of our gazes.

We stood for a while, admiring the dextrous and patient craft until Chris, with dawning recognition said, “that’s David isn’t it?”. What luck. Just upstream from the former site of the medieval Abbot’s Fish Weir, was David Dance. David is a keen angler, who lives close to this bucolic spot, and who has taken an interest in the unfolding history of the Tavy fishery that myself and Chris have been researching.

4. The Abbot’s Weir and the Tavy Fishery

A key reason behind inviting the Rambling’s team to join me for a walk along the Tavy was to share my passion for the history of the Tavy as an historic fishery. With no previous interest in fishing I had been beguiled by the discovery of an 18^th C weir on an old map. The weir is no longer standing but, wanting to know more, I ended up finding out that the weir was built by none other than Sir Francis Drake. Seemingly completely forgotten by the 20^th C, this weir was once celebrated by the touring middle classes, in search of picturesque places to paint and write about.

After re-discovering the Drake Weir I then turned my attention to the Tavy’s Abbot’s Weir, a place that had been the scene of a dramatic fight that took place here in 1280 AD. This involved the forester of the Abbot of Tavistock, Thomas de Gyrebrand, and numerous ‘new monks on the block’ at the recently founded Buckland Abbey. The Buckland men were found chopping down an oak from the Tavistock Abbey woodland to mend their newly acquired weir.  Oak was of high value, so Thomas tried to defend the valuable resource, attacking the new religious neighbours. Numbers were not in his side as there were in the order of fourteen Buckland men mentioned in the court roll, versus only Thomas. Thomas was forced to flee, after being wounded in the right arm with an ash arrow tipped with iron and steel.

As with the Drake Weir, whilst recorded on historic maps, this weir had been largely forgotten. Remarkably, at both weir locations I have found unrecorded archaeological features. This is significant because fish weirs are not the same as mill weirs, nor are they the same as intertidal fish weirs. Few examples of freshwater fish weirs remain and their function and operation, sometimes dating back to Domesday (as is the case for this fishery) is poorly understood.

For anyone interested in knowing more about the Drake Weir, the Buckland Abbot’s Weir, the medieval fish weir fight, or information helping to explain how freshwater fish weirs and fisheries operated, then I would be delighted if you followed the embedded links.

5. Water Quality

The grubby state of our river’s water quality constantly features in the news. Latest 2024 data on the state of the water environment shows that only 14% of English rivers are of good ecological status[9]. Despite its deceiving pellucid appearance, between 2019 and 2022, the Lower Tavy, with its moderate ecological status, either remained the same or deteriorated in respect to several water quality indices[10].  

Water quality is a particularly relevant topic in this blog because it connects many themes mentioned – fishing, mining and leisure. Whilst we know that river water quality is deteriorating, headlining culpability goes to water companies whose sewage systems are no longer fit for purpose. Despite pollution worsening, pollution threats are not new for the Tavy.

The long history of mining within its catchment means that the Tavy has experienced many episodes of damage and change, with high levels of sediment creating turbid, sediment and heavy metal laden waters. From the 19^th C, records begin to spotlight the damage with descriptions from 1872 that ‘mine pollution comes down so thickly that fishing is almost impossible’ and that there is ‘scarcely a fish left’ [11].

By 1896, even though many of the mines had now closed, their legacy was still felt. A speaker at a fishing meeting pointed the finger specifically at the mines close to Double Waters who did not maintain their ‘catch pits’. The toxic effects of the arsenic, probably coming from Wheal Friendship further upstream, were also spotlighted. There were reports that cattle drinking the river water had been poisoned and that this had been on ‘a large scale’ and ‘has been going on all summer and every summer’.

“Can anything be done about the state of our beautiful river? Its charms are entirely destroyed by the discoloured water”

‘A Nature Lover’, letter to the Tavistock Gazette, 1910.

By the time that Robin Armstrong was writing in 1991, the mining threat to water had receded but that from farming and sewage had come to the fore[12].  Armstrong worked for South West Water as a Water Bailiff for fourteen years up to 1989. Reflecting on this time he noted that the ‘number of pollution incidents rose sharply’ and that ‘on more than one occasion the River Tavy was harmed by the release of excessive domestic sewage’ blaming an insufficiently determined anti-pollution policy.  I find it upsetting, given the dirty place we find ourselves, to read his next thoughts:

“Happily, not all trends are regressive. In the last few years the good has begun to overtake the bad, or at least, to catch up with it … Our rivers are again seen as a precious asset rather than convenient dumping grounds”

Armstrong, 1991, p21

Presciently, Armstrong warns against complacency. Once again, we find our rivers polluted and ecologically compromised. Sorrowfully, as I do a final edit of this blog (8^th Oct 2024), it has been announced that salmon in English and Welsh rivers have declined, yet again. They are now at their lowest numbers since records began.

This is no surprise to David or other anglers. Salmon catches have been low for several years, but sea trout have really plummeted over the last 2 years, not just in the Tavy but in several other rivers in the South West. Alarmingly, David tells me, he has frequently heard the term ‘functional extinction’ being used in relation to salmon numbers, a term used to describe when a species has become so rare that it no longer fulfils its ecological role in the ecosystem in which it lives. Organisations, who care about fishery and river health including the Tavy, Walkham & Plym Fishing Club, Devon Wildlife Trust, Westcountry Rivers Trust and others, are actively monitoring water quality on a regular basis. They are part of a wider movement of citizen scientists who regularly collect data on river and sea water in an effort to hold those responsible for our water health to account.

Returning back to the clam and Double Waters, we disappeared through a breach in Goat Rock and took a path alongside the River Walkham. We passed a former mine captain’s house and linear valley bottom features at Buckator, which Chris pointed out were the remnants of tin streaming. The Walkham hurried beside us, in places curling in cauldrons of smoothed river-worn rock. Then, appearing only once you are almost on top of it, was an industrial chimney, concealed by its compatibility with its wooded floodplain surroundings.

6. Powering the Mines – Leats and Chimneys

Mines, dotted throughout these valleys, required power, particularly for pounding and smelting ores and for pumping out excess water for drainage. Until the late 19^th C, the main power sources were from water and firewood/charcoal. I am going to talk about timber in the final ‘interesting thing’, but what of water?

Contouring the slopes throughout this dene are leats. These are man-made channels that take water off the river and convey it to where it is required, often a water wheel. If there is one source of power this inundated landscape can reliably provide it is water, and the mines here certainly depended heavily on these engineered channels.

Walking this landscape it can be easy to miss the leats. None of them flow with water anymore as they have not been upkept but in places they are waterlogged and fool one into thinking they are natural channels.

As technology moved on, even though water continued to be used, steam power was introduced to the valley, although trying to transport coal into this declivitous environment can’t have been straightforward. Few signs of the steam power age remain, but mine records testify to its use. The only exception on this walk is a singular modest chimney, belonging to West Down Mine, poking skywards beside the footpath.

Karen turned the sound equipment off and we finished the walk with greater freedom to speak, knowing that our background chatter would not interfere with the clarity of the recording. This was lucky because we now turned away from the Walkham and headed through a holloway, and abruptly upwards, on a breathless incline. The path hairpinned and evened out so that we could look downhill over vertiginous wooded hillside.   

7. Wood and Timber

Looking at this landscape through the eyes of past landowners – elites like the Earls of Devon, the Dukes of Bedford, the Drakes of Buckland Abbey, and the Abbots of both Buckland and Tavistock Abbey – they would have valued it primarily three main resources: its mineral wealth, the fishery, and its timber.

We have already had a hint at the worth of the timber in this valley, via the story of poor Thomas de Gyrebrand, trying to safeguard the Abbot of Tavistock’s oaks. As explained by Chris and colleagues in their book about nearby the medieval silver mines at Bere “Timber was a vital material for the construction of buildings, boats, carts, machinery, and tools” and with specific reference to mining, “for providing supports and shoring up shafts and adits, and for launders and the pumps required to effect drainage”. [13] The wood was also used for fuel, including by turning it into charcoal, particularly useful for smelting. These uses were as true for the 19^th C mines as they were for those from the medieval period.

Woodland management, in order to ensure sustainable timber, was important. However, this was not always the case, particularly when investors wrung as much short-term profit out of mineral booms as they could. Chris’s research, for example, has shown that by 1300 AD, at least 300 acres of Buckland Abbey’s woodland had been devastated and exhausted at the hands of the notorious Florentine bankers, the Frescobaldi, who were bankrolling the nearby Bere crown silver mines for the English King.

The 19^th C copper mining exerted similar pressures, as demonstrated by RAF aerial photography from 1946, which can be compared to more extensive recent woodland coverage. Today, the west bank of the Tavy is managed for commercial timber with coniferous plantations, whilst to the east and within the steep Walkham Valley, this is clothed with ancient and regenerated deciduous woodland. With high annual rainfall that soddens the valley, this land west of Dartmoor, hosts temperate rainforest woodland, giving the trees a new value in an ecological conservation age [14].

And then we emerged. Mirroring the start of the walk we broke beyond the oaks of the valley, into a flatter realm of first, small spikey hawthorns, then out into the expanse of aromatic bracken, where ponies grazed. Behind us, if we cared to stop and turn, were views to Dartmoor. Rounding a corner, we were back at the cars and it was time to say goodbye.

I am so grateful to Karen and Clare for walking with Andrew, Chris and myself, and for letting us share our affection for this place, for landscape interpretation, and our geeky inquisitous friendship.

The Route

Route Summary:

• We parked on West Down, just beyond Walreddon Manor and, keeping to the west of the down, we descended into a dell and onwards to the banks of the Tavy.
• We crossed the footbridge at Double Waters and followed the bank until a cobble beach below Tavy Cottage.
• Then we retraced our steps, crossing the footbridge and then, through a gap in goat rock, took the footpath up the River Walkham. The path deviates away from the river for a while to go around a couple of houses.
• Passing the chimney, a couple of hundred metres further on we took a footpath to our left and headed up the hill. The footpath hairpins and then traces the boundary of the wood and fields.
• Follow the path in a straight line across the down until you get to a walled corner of woodland. Round this corner you will return to the parking.

References

[1] A friend, John Hudswell, is currently writing a book, annotating her book ‘Home Scenes’, accompanied with research into Evans’s life.

[2] John Blanchard https://www.johnblanchard.net/index.php/wildlife-sites-of-interest-protected-areas/155-grenofen-wood-and-west-down-sssi

[3] Historic England https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/technical-advice/monuments-and-sites/invasive-plants-and-archaeology/

[4] Bray, A.E. 1838. A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy; Its Natural History, Manners, Customs, Superstitions, Scenery, Antiquities, Biography of Eminent Persons, etc, etc. In a Series of Letters to Robert Southey Esq. Volume III, John Murray, London.

[5] Evans, R. 1846. Home Scenes or, Tavistock and its Vicinity. Simpkin and Marshall, London and J.L. Commins, Tavistock.

[6] Rendell, P. 1996. Exploring the Lower Walkham Valley. Forest Publishing.

[7] Virtuous Lady Mine, Buckland Monachorum, West Devon, Devon, England, UK. https://www.mindat.org/loc-1517.html

[8] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/arsenic-properties-incident-management-and-toxicology/arsenic-general-information

[9] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-water-environment-indicator-b3-supporting-evidence/state-of-the-water-environment-indicator-b3-supporting-evidence

[10] https://environment.data.gov.uk/catchment-planning/WaterBody/GB108047007840

[11] Woodcock, G. 2012. The Pollution of the Tavy in Tavistock’s Yesterdays: Episodes from Her History. Volume 21. Deer Park Productions.

[12] Armstrong, R. 1991. Under the Bridge. George Philip, p21

[13] Ripon, S., Claughton, P. and Smart, C. 2009. Mining in a Medieval Landscape: The Royal Silver Mines of the Tamar Valley. Exeter University Press, p102-105.

[14] Shrubsole, G. 2022. The Lost Rainforests of Britain. Collins.