The King Way: Part 2 – Blackdown to Nodden Gate

Hemery’s ‘Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks: A guide to 28 routes’, Track 11. This section is from Blackdown to Nodden Gate. 5 miles

Background

The King Way, as we saw in the first leg of this route (from Tavistock to Mary Tavy) is defined by its identity as a postal route between Okehampton and Tavistock (Hemery, 1986). The postal service was first set up in the early 16th C but before 1720 Tavistock didn’t have it’s own postal route, the nearest being that which came from London, via Okehampton and on to Launceston. Key routes were manned by postmasters with all the services that this provided – in particular the rapid provision of horses for both post and other travel needs, and the administration of the post in transit – good record and time keeping was expected (Hammeon, 1912). Messengers would travel between ‘posts’ where the mail was relayed on to another messenger who would take it along the next stage. Beyond the main post routes, any mail was conveyed onwards as necessary, by messengers on horseback and on foot. In 1720 Tavistock got its first regular service from Okehampton (Hemery, 1986).

High standards were laid out about the speed of the post along recognised routes. Post boys were expected to travel at a rate of seven miles in summer and five miles in winter and horses were supposed to be ready to convey post onwards within 15 minutes (Hemmeon, 1912). This shows the importance given to the speed of deliveries, although Crofts (1967) indicates that beyond the capital and the most important postal arteries, expectations of speed may not have been as exacting as the rules and regulations suggested . Even if the mantra of ‘Post. Haste!’ for special deliveries was seldom required on the King Way, getting letters and parcels from A to B inherently comes with at least a modicum of timely expectations. This links to the rationale for the King Way which is supposed to function as a rapid riding route. Although it used the main roads close to Okehampton and Tavistock, in the middle section it avoided the rutted and confined holloways of the villages to take advantage of the open and faster riding country of the moorland periphery.

The job of post-boy was a dangerous one. The post was a particular target of highwaymen, robbing the mail principally at night. Such was the problem that in 1765 the death penalty was imposed for robbing the mail (1765 Postage Act), presumably in response to a growing problem of postal hijackings. However:

“It was sometimes said that the mails were carried by boys not always of the best character, and very often they were in league with the robbers … Any post boy deserting the mail or allowing any one but the guard to ride on the horse or carriage was liable to commitment to hard labour”

Hemmeon, 1912

For this stretch of the King Way, over sparsely populated downland, the risk of robbery must have nervously shadowed the post-boys. Imagine the fear when mail arrived late at night knowing you had to ride into the darkness across this bleak ground, territory known to be frequented by highwaymen. It is perhaps no coincidence that Gibbet Hill’s presence prevails over this patch of moorland.

On leaving Tavistock the precise route of the King Way was easy to discern, but in the more open countryside of the middle stretches the trail is more elusive. Hemery (1986) describes in detail the line he feels it took through Blackdown/Mary Tavy, over Black Down and on to Lydford. For the downland portion this lies close to the current A386 road, but through the settlements Hemery traces a different line, not always publicly accessible. I have tried as best I can to illustrate this in the details below. As with all these old routes, when walking them, we can but do our best to legally follow them as best we can.

7 Interesting Things

1. Blackdown

In my previous blog post about the King Way we left off at the Mary Tavy Inn at Lane Head that sits above the old village of Mary Tavy . Today this village is considered as one with the settlement of Blackdown which lies on the main A386 road. Turnpike development in the 1760s causally shifted the gravity of this settlement to the improved road.

Virtually all the expansion of the built environment from the late 19th C onwards is at Blackdown not Mary Tavy. So, although today the community and its administration is one place, the two parts are not physically the same. There remains a landscape divide. The buildings of the two historic places are discontinuous; separated by green fields and ‘brown field’ former mines. Mary Tavy is ‘valley’, is medieval, and connects via holloways. Blackdown is ‘downland’, modern, and connects via turnpike.

But what certainly unites both parts of the village is mining. Wheal Friendship (circa 1700 to 1925), which spanned the ground space across and between the two, was at one time the second biggest copper mine in the world, second only to Devon Great Consoles (Heritage Gateway^a). Hemery (1983, p992) says that in 1875 there were 17 water wheels in use here! How busy that new turnpike road through Blackdown must have been, with mine workers and minerals coming and going, not to mention all that secondary economy that goes into servicing such a massive enterprise.

2. Gibbet Hill

Gibbet Hill does not lie on the King Way but dominates it and I sense its history is intertwined with this postal route. In order to explain I am going to explore a bit of gibbeting history.

Gibbeting was the act of hanging people in chains or in a metal cage. It was used to distinguish the death penalty used for any one of about 220 ordinary crimes from those of the most heinous. Gibbeting was used for murder, robbery, arson and riot. Criminals guilty of these ‘worst of the worst’ offences could also be sentenced to post-mortem dissection. Eighty per cent of felons were dealt with this way, but gibbeting accounted for the other 20%. Between the 1720s and 1830s this translated into about 375 men (Tarlow and Dyndor, 2015). Spread over the whole of the country, that isn’t very many. Gibbeting was therefore a relatively rare practice.

Before the 18th C criminals could be gibbetted alive but in the 1700s they were executed first and hung in a cage already dead. The chained or caged body would be transported to the gibbet site and raised on a very high pole of about 30ft tall. Bodies would be left to gradually decompose and gibbets were designed with enough movement to allow the cage to creak and clank as it swung in the wind. The lofty altitude and noises were thus purposefully designed to bring attention to the fate of the criminal and the importance of justice. The gibbet could hang for many years and so, whilst gibbeting might be rare, its persistence in the landscape gave it a lengthy presence.

Given the rarity of gibbeting, why is there a Gibbet Hill located here in this remote part of the Dartmoor periphery? Tarlow and Dyndow (2015) state three key reasons for the siting of gibbets:

• Practicality – common land was often favoured because it enabled crowds to form; gibbeting was a popular spectacle so it was necessary that crowds did not block thoroughfares nor trample crops.
• Visibility – hills were popular locations because they maximised conspicuity.
• Proximity – gibbets were often hung near the scene of the crime in order to link justice to the crime. Highway robbery and mail robbery therefore meant that gibbets occupied locations near important roads.

Gibbet Hill satisfies all of these locational factors, and in relation to the point about proximity, is suggestive that the crime of highway robbery was problematic here. This is supported by local oral histories of caged outlaws and highwaymen left to starve.

It is also highly significant that gibbeting at this spot, which satisfies the mantra ‘location, location, location’ is also close to Lydford. Here until the early 19th C, and for many centuries before, was the notoriously dreadful criminal court and gaol. Crossing (1987, writing c. 1901) helps shed light on the relationship between gaol and gibbet. He says:

“It may be remarked that one of the gates of Black Down, at the end of Burn Lane, is still known as Ironcage Gate”

Criminals would no doubt be brought on the road from Lydford to Burn Land and then onwards to the hill top. Only about 100 yards from Ironcage Gate is shown on old maps a smithy. I wonder if it was here that the iron cage was made and the convicted body incarcerated? I like how this historical record from Crossing joins the dots of the route between Lydford Gaol, Ironcage Gate, and hoisting spot high on the hill, where the criminal cadaver’s notoriety was left to ferment in the breeze.

Gibbeting was a popular spectacle, drew big crowds, and created a carnival atmosphere that could last for days (Tarlow and Dyndor, 2015). Whilst the relatively remote situation of Gibbet Hill would set limits on the size of crowds, even here there would likely be a large gathering to view and celebrate this ultimate punishment of the state. The power of the celebration, the enduring legacy of the body swinging in the cage for many years after, and the stench and and noise coming from the gibbet cemented its ill-fame through enduring place names and the oral histories associated with place.

For those who want to enjoy the macabre narratives associated with Gibbet Hill I recommend Legendary Dartmoor – Dartmoor’s Gibbet Hill , Hemery (1983, p996-997) and Charles Kingley’s depiction in Westward Ho! of the outlaw Gubbins family in this location, thought to have some basis in the real history of Gibbet Hill country.

3. Going like the Clappers

If you speed across the A386 between Mary Tavy and Lydford – going like the clappers – then you are driving over a couple of clapper bridges that you probably didn’t know were there. Hemery (1986) describes the Souscombe Brook which flows under the main road between Watervale and the Beardown farms (3a) saying “the bridge is a sturdy clapper, reinforced to carry modern traffic“. There is no right of access here and the clapper can’t be seen from the road so I have to take Henery’s word for it.

However, there is another bigger clapper that can be viewed (3b). If you park at the bend at the north end of Black Down, above the Henscott Plantation, the road traverses a small stream. The modern road is built up high here to cross the gully. From the lower side of the road you will be able to see granite clappers side by side, protruding from under the base of the road as it makes this corner. Hemery says:

“Here it is carried across a gully by a clapper of eight imposts, one being a sill stone from a Tudor mullion window”

Hemery, 1983, p935

I could only spy three clappers and assume the others are covered by the road. However, there is a huge cleanly worked slab of granite over which the water cascades which I am assuming is the Tudor mullion Hemery speaks of.

4. The Waterfield Inn

I have ignored the better known Royal Standard at Blackdown and Dartmoor Inn at Lydford in favour of focusing on the lesser known Waterfield Inn. It is another of those ‘no more’ places that I seem to be so drawn to.

Hemery describes the King Way as passing through here, not along the the current main road, but to the lower western side. I think this RAF aerial photograph from 1946 (see below) may hint at the line of our road passing Watervale.

Hemery is clear in noting the existence of this long lost inn …

“Watervale Farm was once – at least until 1845 – the Waterfield Inn and appears as ‘Waterfield’ on both OS 1809 and Greenwood. The Waterfield Inn, like the Royal Standard at Black Down, occupied a site equally convenient for travellers on the King Way and the new turnpike road.”

Hemery (1986, p132)

Crossing has more to say on the location of this vanished inn …

Higher up the road [the King Way] and not far from the verge of the down is Watervale, where was formerly and inn, which may possibly have suggested to Kinglsley the one he has placed on the common.

Crossing (1992, p168)

I briefly mention Charles Kingsley at the end of our exploration of Gibbet Hill, in relations to the outlaws the Gubbinses. In Kingsley’s famous book ‘Westward Ho!’ set in Tudor times, he wrote scenes set in this vicinity. Crossing clearly thinks the Waterfield Inn was a likely candidate for the Rogue’s Roost Inn on Brent-Tor Down which Kingsley fictionalised. So let’s end this section on the Waterfield Inn with a description by Kingsley of the Rogue’s Roost:

5. The Take Off Stone

Beside the roadside at Lower Beardown Farm is a diminutive stone inscribed with the words ‘Take Off’ in a distinct Georgian script. But what does this directive mean?

As the Turnpike Acts gradually improved the road network, this meant that roads became more suitable for transport by carriage and cart rather than saddle horse and pack horse. But over steep ground, wheeled traffic still struggled with insufficient horse power and so had to take on an extra horse to pull over the unforgiving topography. As Crossing (1987) elucidates:

“in the days of toll-gates an extra horse was permitted to assist in pulling a heavy load, free of toll, over this road, from the neighbourhood of Okehampton, on the understanding that the animal was to go no further than this stone; that it was here to be ‘taken off'”.

This example of a ‘Take Off stone is a replica. The original was stollen in the late 1990s (Heritage Gateway^b). Next to it is another stone set atop with an iron ring. I wonder if unhitched horses were tethered here?

As a final aside, Higher and Lower Beardown farms at this location are in Domesday as the manor of ‘Ferding’, held by Fulco of Alured the Breton (Heritage Gateway^c). I just had to include that because the names are so whimsical.

6. The ‘Roman’ Bridge

I am not entirely sure what the rational was with the road changes here at ‘The Roman Bridge’. The old road used to go straight as can be seen on the map below.

Originally a ford, it looks like the first phase of turnpike development (1760s) created a causewayed route over this bridge which nicely flattened out the gradient through this small valley. I am just surmising this – there is no historic listing for this bridge.

Sometime between 1832 and 1835 a new bridge was built and the road re-routed to sweep a longer course around a big bend. The gradients here aren’t overly steep so the justification for diverting the road so soon after the first turnpike improvements seems odd. Perhaps this ‘little nip’ was more problematic for carriages and carts than it seems to modern eyes. Perhaps the first turnpike bridge was badly built with its strength and width not being up to the job of handling the increasing traffic. Perhaps it was easier to keep the traffic flowing over the earlier turnpike road and build a new section than it was to have the inconvenience of closing the road whilst improvements were made? Whatever the reasoning, there now remains one of those stranded bits of old road.

There is no public right of way along it so it is not easily observed. I asked permission to take a look because I was intrigued by Hemery’s description of it as a ‘Roman’ Bridge’ which he puts in quotes, implying that he was repeating a common description of it. I got chatting to a local farmer about it and he said “some say it is a Roman bridge but it isn’t Roman“. He is absolutely right. It is not Roman. A very kind man in an adjacent property let me take a look. At the bottom of his garden I jumped into the river in my wellies from where I was able to view the bridge close up. I can see now why it is called ‘The Roman Bridge’. Its design uses a semi-circular arch of the romanesque style and also known as a ‘roman arch’ (as opposed to a gothic arch). The mystery is solved but the confusing nomenclative legacy continues.

7. Rattlebrook Peat Tramway

Cutting across the King Way at Nodden Gate, is a tramway. It was built to transport peat down from the Rattlebrook peat works higher up on the moor (Heritage Gateway^d). Many men of Lydford, Lake, Sourton and Bridestowe worked in this industry and made the journey up to the peat works. Peat has been cut and used as a fuel for as long as people and peat have coexisted …

The value of the industry is exemplified by this tramway, which must have been expensive to construct. Completed in 1879 it brought the peat down over 1000 feet in drop along iron rails using horse drawn wagons; later by a petrol powered light locomotive (Hemery, 1983). In 1901 the West of England Compressed Peat Company set up a plant to carbonise the peat up at the peat works. This was supposed to make the peat commercially viable as a fuel, much like coal. But the process was unsuccessful. The treated peat burnt too rapidly and was therefore unwanted. However, plain old peat was still needed. The tracks of the tramway remained in use until 1931 after which the rails were removed. Lorries continued to bring peat down from the peat works until as late as the 1950s.

The Route

As with the first leg of this walk, there are a number of sections I haven’t been able to follow as they are not public rights of way. It is also important to note that Hemery’s descriptions about the route are very detailed and so anyone who wants the precise information ought to go to the original source. I don’t want to spend my time here relaying and justifying every twist and turn. However, in relation to the route through Blackdown I have updated this blog post to present an alternative to that described by Hemery based on the experience of Roger Page of Blackdown House. I have tried, on these old maps, to show as best I can the route as Hemery describes (solid line). I have also indicated the sections I walked (dashed line), sometimes diverting a little for reasons of access, safety and interest. I have also provided a ‘close up’ of Blackdown to show the more likely route of the King Way (blue) based on the filed evidence shown to me by Dr Page.

• We pick the King Way up from the Mary Tavy Inn where the route appears to follow roughly the line of the current road. Through Blackdown (1), in the vicinity of Down’s Garage it takes a holloway path (no longer accessible) to the west of the main road.

• Hemery suggests that it then traverses to the other side of the main road close to Tavy House and then continue on the east until above ‘Crossing’, after which it rises to the main road and follows a similar path. Gibbet Hill (2) can be seen to the left when walking northwards.

• However, according to Roger Page the King Way, which can be seen as a holloway in places running through the grounds of various properties, continues on a straight NNE course to the west of the main road. This straighter course makes much more sense than the meandering route suggested by Hemery. In some sections the route is obscured because it has has been infilled where it passes through grounds and gardens. For a good portion it has also been severely eroded by a gully that has developed into which drainage on Black Down has been diverted, the concentration of water causing the erosion. This gulley is known locally as the Gurgey’. In places the old track surface can be seen through which the gully has incised.

• Whether following Hemery’s route or the more likely straighter course, both are restricted because they cross private property. I therefore walked beside the main road as far as the Royal Standard where I cut through on a footpath and out onto open moorland. I kept close to the downland edge , picking up the main road above the village.
• Cross Black Down close to the A386. Notice the clapper (3b) at the bend. The King Way crossed the fields on the edge of the down, passing to the west of Watervale (4) before joining back to the main road.
• Because the road is busy here I walked on the roadside verge as far as Watervale but then took a detour to explore the old tracks east of the road.

• From my detour I popped out at a lane just above the Beardown farms. Cross the road to these farms and just on from them, you can see the original turnpike road going straight ahead whilst the newer turnpike goes off on a big bend to Kitts Bridge.
• On the side of the road here can be seen the ‘Take Off’ stone (5) and also a very nice but hard to read milestone. You can view from the public footpath the line of the earliest turnpike from this southerly side and you can access it from the north but it is no longer a right of way. I got permission from a local homeowner to view the ‘Roam Bridge’ (6) from the river at the bottom of his garden.

• Hemery shows the King Way following the main road until the Dartmoor Inn but a local farmer told me it went up Kitts Lane and on to the moor. This is much safer to walk so that is the way I went.
• The King Way then follows the wall of the moorland edge as it nudges north and east. Above the Dartmoor Inn the walker needs to follow the right of way and do a little detour to a style over the wall into fields whereas the original route would have kept a straighter path.
• Keeping the wall (the King Wall) on your left, continue until Nodden Gate and the Pea t Tramway (7).

References

Archiuk. Old Maps. https://www.archiuk.com/archi/archi_maps.htm

Croft, J. (1967). Packhorse, Wagon and Post. Routledge and Kegan Paul: London.

Crossing, W. (1987). One Hundred Years on Dartmoor. Historical notices of the forest and its purlieus during the nineteenth century, Devon Books: Exeter.

Crossing, W. (1992) Crossing’s Dartmoor Worker. Peninsula Press: Newton Abbot

Devon County Council Environment Viewer. https://maptest.devon.gov.uk/portaldvl/apps/webappviewer/

Hemery, E. (1983). High Dartmoor. Robert Hale: London.

Hemmeon, J.C. (1912). History of the British Post Office. Harvard Economic Series, Harvard University.

Heritage Gateway^a. Wheal Friendship Mine, Mary Tavy. www.heritage Gateway.org.uk

Heritage Gateway^b Beardown Farm, Stone. www.heritage Gateway.org.uk

Heritage Gateway^c. Lower Beardown, Lydford. www.heritage Gateway.org.uk

Heritage Gateway^d. The Rattlebrook Peat Railway. www.heritage Gateway.org.uk

Tarlow, S. and Dyndor, Z. (21015). The Landscape of the Gibbet, Landscape History, 36:1, 71-88,