Trans-Dartmoor Packhorse Track: Part 6 – Postbridge to Water Hill

Part of Hemery’s ‘Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks: A guide to 28 routes’, Track 9 – Chagford to Plymouth Route

This section was from Postbridge to Caroline Cot on Water Hill, a distance of 2.2 miles.

Part 5 – Trans-Dartmoor Packhorse Track: Part 5 – Two Bridges to Postbridge

Part 7 – Trans-Dartmoor Packhorse Track: Part 7 – Water Hill to Chagford

Background

Postbridge is another Dartmoor location that, as a village, is youthful, but as a place, is antideluvian. As with all the other villages and hamlets I have passed along this route – Yelverton, Dousland, Princetown, Two Bridges – Postbridge only became a nucleated settlement in the turnpike era, when the likes of Tyrwhitt, Buller and others, were capitalising on the economic benefits of the turnpiked road. They brought imagination and hubris to their dreams of a new era of agriculture and economy for the moorland middle. They tried, but struggled. In the walls and halls they built, they left a legacy. And whilst their enlightenment activities might have withered, the new road, the new inns, new tourism and new leisure – all these things persisted. To underline how ‘not a place’ Postbridge was in days gone by, dwellers here, until about 1815, simply gave their address as ‘in the forest’’ (Brown, 1961, p195).

Yet Postbridge, despite not having any buildings, let alone being a village until the Carter’s turnpike came in 1772, was nonetheless, named on maps. It is first recorded in 1655 in a lease (Greeves and Styanbrook, 2004) and on the well-known Ogilby book of strip maps called ‘Britannia‘, published in 1685. Where did it get this name? There are three different possibilities, as suggested by various Dartmoor authors.

The first suggestion is that the name comes from the crudely stacked piers of stone that hold up the bridge. These can be described as posts or ‘imposts’. This is the definition given in ‘The place-names of Devon’ by Gover et al (1931, p196), and is the explanation preferred by Hemery.

A second plausible suggestion is made by Brown (1961, p209) who says that, in order to mark the old road, post-stones were placed at intervals. These can be seen marked on the Ogilby map (for example, in the map above there is ‘a Stone Calld Merres Pitt). Brown poses the question: ‘the stones marking a road were often called post-stones on Dartmoor; was the track called the post-road, and hence post-bridge?‘

Finally, some have speculated that Postbridge takes its name from being a post road, (Crossing, 1912, p467; Pilkington Rogers, 1930, p45).

‘I have heard the inhabitants of Dartmoor refer to the old tracks as post-roads, and the clapper in question being on the most important of these, the forerunner of the present highway from Plymouth and Tavistock to Chagford and Moreton, would no doubt be spoken of as the post-bridge‘

Crossing, 1912, p467

Against this theory is the fact that this road is not recorded as an official royal ‘post road’, used for the government mail (Brayshay, 1991; Cooper, 2014). Ogilby did include this trans-moor route in his Britannia road atlas which, previously was thought only to show post roads. This is not the case (Hodson, 2000); whilst most of the roads in Britannia are post roads, they are not exclusively so. It is also the case that not all post criss-crossing the country was ‘royal’. Private post was also sent – not just ‘personal’ letters, but private in the sense of commercial and estate matters. These letters and packets could be sent by both ‘common carriers’ or ‘private carriers’ and private messengers (Crofts, 1967, p83). With Tavistock being in the estate of the Earl (later Duke) of Bedford, expedient communication to Exeter would have been necessary, whether this was when the Earl was in residence^[1] or as an absent landlord, with estate stewards conducting the business. Before the establishment of a more stable, widespread and democratic postal network in the 18th C, this trans-moor track could very plausibly have been known for carrying post, albeit not royal post.

All three suggestions are credible, and irrespective of which is ‘correct’, they all contain details that help us understand the pre-turnpike track.

7 Interesting Things

1. The Cyclopean Bridge

Postbridge, like other clapper bridges on the moor, is described on older maps, and by writers from earlier centuries, as a ‘cyclopean‘ bridge, a word denoting a type of ancient masonry made with massive irregular blocks. Constructed from stacks of stone piers, topped with large flat blocks of granite, clappers are thought to get their name from  an Anglo-Saxon word, ‘cleaca’, meaning stepping stones, or ‘bridging the stepping stones’ (DNPA, n.d.). Some claim the bridge is prehistoric, some that it is 13th century and others that it is late medieval; none citing evidence. The truth is, nobody knows how old clapper bridges are because they have not been subject to any scientific dating that could provide an answer.

Various authors repeat the suggestion that the bridge is first recorded in 1380 AD (HER, n.d.), but the first cited reference is given by Greeves and Stanbrook who say that the earliest record was in 1655 when:

‘William French the elder, a yeoman of Widecombe leased the Outer Newtake to his sons; the newtake is described as ‘scituate lying and beinge betweene Postbridge and a nutake of on(e) Richard Leeres within the Forest of Dartmoore in the parish of Withecombe’ (Devon Record Office/Merripitt MSS).

Greeves and Stanbrook, 2004, cited by the HER, n.d.

Whatever its age, Postbridge clapper has survived remarkably well, considering floods and the interference of those who, once it was replaced by the turnpike bridge, might have wanted to ‘repurpose’ its slabs. Crossing (1888, p64) tells of how the bridge was in jeopardy, describing events from the summer of 1874 when he observed the central slab lay in the river. He made enquiries as to what had happened and was told by an old man that it had been purposefully displaced about fifty years earlier by a chap whose scheme had been to create a barrier across the river to form a duck pond and prevent his ducks from going downstream (Pilkington-Rogers, 1930, p45). His hope was that the slab would have fallen, propped against the piers and that he would similarly displace the others. After failing on toppling the first, he seemingly abandoned the plan.

The vandalised stone was put back in 1880 but unfortunately, not quite in its original position (Crossing, 1988, p45), which Pilkington-Rogers (1930, p46) describes as being ‘upside down and inside out‘. Crossing is diplomatic about the original culprit saying that “I forebear to mention names but the person who is said to have done this still lives on the moor, and is now a very old man‘.

2. A Prehistoric Metropolis?

As Pilkington-Rogers amusingly puts it, Postbridge is essentially modern but is known by the ‘dreadful‘ title of “the prehistoric metropolis of the moor” (1930, p115), a term coined in the 19th century and replicated by many Dartmoor writers. He draws comparison to Merrivale and the fact that, in comparison, it might initially seem a ‘strange misnomer‘ given how renowned Merrivale’s prehistoric landscape is. Rightly though, he points out that there was almost certainly far more in the way of antiquities here in the past than can be seen today due to the almost certain zealous despoliation of the late 18th and 19th centuries improvers.

Pilkington-Rogers did not have the benefit of being able to see laid out, the pink triangles and pink splodges, of historic records on a GIS map. What struck me, when looking at this part of the moor, is just how many pounds and flint scatters there are here. I counted nine find spots of flint scatters within a kilometre of Postbridge. Pilkington-Rogers, like me, was also taken with the density of pounds here. He says that fifteen can be counted within a half mile radius of Postbridge and there is also an abundance of cists mainly to the north and west of the main road.

Why is this? Could it be that the environmental factors that supported this island of ancient tenements in the middle of the moor in the medieval period – an abundance of tin, accompanied by flatter ground and relative shelter – also attracted people here in prehistoric times?

3. The Temperance Hotel

Temperance was a particularly Victorian preoccupation. Taking off in the 1830s the movement was initially concerned with persuading people to temper their alcohol consumption because drinking was associated with many societal problems such as poverty, destitution, disease and crime (Yeomans, 2011).

Initial temperance inspired changes promoted beer over spirits, as ale was seen as less problematic (hence the Beer Act of 1830), however, a proliferation of alcohol-selling premises quickly led to a disheartening realisation that intoxication was still an issue. The temperance movement therefore repositioned away from moderation to abstinence. Abstinence was portrayed as a moral strength and as a way of self-betterment. Those that could ‘resist temptation’ (with its clear biblical connotations), modelled respectable behaviours; and in this we have the trope of the deserving and undeserving poor.

The temperance movement not only shifted in focus from moderation in drinking to complete teetotalism , but also from having a persuasive stance, to a prohibitive one. Unlike in the United States, legislation from the late 19th C did manage to confine opening hours (e.g. Licensing Act of 1872), but in England, full prohibition was not enacted.

Methodism was particularly enthusiastic when it came to temperance, with Wesleyan Methodism adopting teetotalism in the 1870s (Curtis, 2016). It is within this context that we can see the history of the East Dart Hotel. Built c. 1861^[2] according to an East Dart Hotel website, in its first years it operated as a normal inn. According to Quick (1992, p38), its change to a temperance hotel originated from landlady Lizzie Webb, wife of John Webb, the landlord. Supposedly Lizzie was a committed church-goer who would have undoubtedly heard sermons on the vice of drunkenness^[3]. The inn became a temperance hotel around 1880 and remained ‘dry’ until c. 1930 – an impressive fifty years. Its shift back to selling alcohol, mirrors wider society, the temperance movement persisting into the 1920s but then fizzling out.

‘On arriving here we entered the house of entertainment, now a temperance house, but at that time and for several years afterwards, being known as the Greyhound Inn, and while resting ourselves, talked upon matters pertaining to the neighbourhood with a moorman whom we found there.‘ ^[4]

Crossing, 1988

The East Dart Hotel took this name in the late 1920s after it stopped being a temperance hotel. Brown says that in its temperance days it was known as Webb’s Hotel after the landlord Captain John Webb (1961, p217). Before its temperance history it seems to have been called the Greyhound Inn (Crossing, 1888, p63), presumably taking over the name of the earlier and different Greyhound Inn in Postbridge; a building on the west side of the bridge, that later stopped being an inn and instead became Greyhound Farm.

4. The Stannon Lodges

I almost missed these lodges. I only saw them as I fumbled at the gate of St Gabriel’s chapel opposite. I have never walked the road here, normally just whizzing by in the car. Yet again, being on foot has revealed details that previously passed me by.

Of an austere cubic shape, the two lodges stand side-by-side on the northern side of the main road. Paired lodges normally lead to a grand house, but these lodges seemed to mark the entrance to nothing. Something about these lodges was not making sense. Pilkington-Rogers (1930, p115) provides an explanation.

In the late 18th century there began an over-enthusiastic passion for Dartmoor improvement, with men such as Tyrwhitt and Buller attempting to enclose and transform the ground of the high moor into productive farmland. As part of this sentiment a large country estate and starch factory, extracting starch from potatoes, was planned for Stannon. These lodge gates were built but very little else. Pilkington-Rogers quotes Baring-Gould who says “those who leased these lands found that the draining of the bogs drained their pockets much faster than the mires“. Stannon mansion never got built and ‘dwindled’ to a mere cottage under Stannon Tor.

‘Sir Thomas Tyrwitt infected others with his dreams that alchemy of lime and the plough might transform the Dartmoor peat to gold … Dartmoor as an arable country is a delusion and a snare‘

Pilkington-Rogers (1930, p115)

Hemery (1983, p546) tells the history slightly differently. Thomas and John Hullet entertained a scheme for starch manufacturing here and Hemery says that they built the house below Stannon Tor with the long approach from the lodges, which soon became worker’s cottages. Hemery makes no mention of any plan to build a mansion, but it does seem strange to build two lodges at the bottom of a mile long track unless an extravagant building at its head had been the intention.

It seems these lodges, also known as ‘Hullets Lodge’, were erected some time between 1824 and 1832 as the Devon Record office has a memorandum concerning payment for purchase of Stannon by Hamlyn from 1824, whilst Hemery cites a death record dated 1832 for a Mr Peter Hannaford who lived in one of the lodges.

5. Witches & Wart Charmers

A notorious resident of one of the Stannon lodges was the ‘White Witch of Dartmoor’. Her name was Mrs Webb^[5] and she was perhaps the best known of what seems to have been a huddle of healers resident in and around Postbridge (Brown, 1961, p223-225). In her article, Brown is discreet and respectful. She only shares her knowledge of those charmers already deceased, saying that ‘the one thing that is abhorred by all charmers is publicity’.

In this small moorland area, Brown cites folk memory of eight charmers, including Mrs Webb who ‘had the gift’. These people were variously remembered as being able to staunch bleeding, reduce inflammation, cure sprains, give prophecies, and charm warts. Sometimes this was done with the help of herbal medicine, sometimes by uttering charms, and sometimes with their touch. The white sap of rushes, for instance, was used by some of the charmers to get rid of warts. I even recall my mum, a Princetown girl in the fifties and sixties, telling me about a ‘wart man’ from Postbridge who cured her childhood wart. My memory is that she didn’t have to see the man, and that just having your name given to him was enough for him to be able to work his healing magic.

There are some important details about these charmers that Brown shares: 1) charmers never call themselves witches; 2) their power is entirely beneficent; 3) the ‘gift’ is handed down in the family alternately between the sexes – father to daughter, mother to son or nephew etc; 4) if the next generation is not worthy it can die with the family but can be ‘given’ to someone outside the family; 5) charmers may use secret formula of words for their charms; 6) no charmer will accept payment in any circumstances as they believe that if they do this they will lose their power; and 7) recipients must have ‘sincerity of purpose’ and belief that the magic is possible (although Brown acknowledges knowing sceptics who were also cured).

Returning to Mrs Webb, the ‘White Witch of Dartmoor’, we are told that, in addition to herbal practice, such as surrounding a bite with a circle of ash twigs, she had some other arcane and more unsavoury methods …

‘She employed the well-known recipe for whooping cough: catch a house-mouse, well fry it and eat it. Her cure for snake-bite was: ‘Adders caught and killed, chopped fine and boiled and left to cool. After cooling, a kind of scum forms on the top which must be skimmed off and drunk.’

Brown 1961, p225

6. Higher Merripit

Merripit is first recorded as Meriput in 1344 but to which Merripit this refers is not known as there was a Higher and Lower Merripit (Gover et al, 1931, p195). Crossing thought that this 14th C reference was to Lower Merripit, but Burnard, one of the founding members of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, thought Higher Merripit to be ‘one of the oldest, if not the oldest’ farms in the Forest of Dartmoor (The Dartmoor Trust – Record 3877) and Crossing (1912, p474) is able to cite a lease for this farm from William French to Walter and John French dated 10^th May 1555.

Between Higher and Lower Merripit, it is Higher Merripit that lies closest to the trans-moor track, which Donn’s map of 1765 shows (see below). The Rev John Swete passed this way in the August of 1797 he was able to say …

‘I skirted two Farms, situated to the right and left of the way, and called Higher and Lower Merripit. The grass had not yet been mowed, and the Oats were perfectly green.’

Swete, 1797 in Gray, 2000, Vol. IV, p40

Photos taken by Burnard show the farm – a classic longhouse – before it burnt down in 1907. To these evocative photos, Hemery (1983, p501) is able to add a vivid interior description. Despite the fire apparently it still contained many old features including a ‘vast open fireplace, a fine clome oven and a granite stairway’. The lower end of the building was originally the calves house (sensibly down slope of the living quarters) and water came to the house from a spring, channeled in front of the building with a branch to the shippen^[6]. Water was also obtained from the Stannon Brook via a pot-leat.

Of all these isolated medieval farms in the moor’s heartland, Higher Merripit has a competing tension between being both remote, and yet connected, lying as it does on the east-west moorland track. Higher Merripit would be first to orally receive the news of tattling travellers passing along the Tavistock – Exeter route. Would travellers stop here for hospitality in pre-turnpike days, when farmhouses brewed their own ale? Was this a valuable supplement to the farm income? Was Higher Merripit regarded as the same as all the other farms in this remote parish or did its position close to the track give it a social status not enjoyed by the others? If travellers, hospitality and ale featured at all in the income and identity of Higher Merripit, then it is hard to imagine that the new turnpike with its new inns, was anything other than detrimental to this farm.

7. Caroline Cott

In 1825 shares were sold for a new tin mining venture on the already liberally worked hillslopes in the radius of the Warren House Inn. The mine – Wheal Caroline – was not a good prospect for the prospectors. It was so unproductive that it was omitted from the Mining Records and shut some time in the 1830s (Hemery, 1983, p514).

Adjacent to the defunct and invisible Wheal Caroline is crumbling Caroline Cott (also known as Caroline Farm and Statts Farm) – a small dwelling and enclosure, assumed to have been built for the mine (HER^b, n.d.). Shortly after the mine closure it was adapted for use as a farm by Henry Jenkins. According to Hemery, he is listed in 1839 as paying tithes for the ‘Cot House and Potato Garden’. Maps and aerial photographs of this plot show it to have a peculiar planform of notches and angles that must have served a design purpose but whose rationale is now obscure.

By circa 1850 the cott was occupied by a Richard Sleeman and in 1858 John Pounsay ‘requested the grant of a tin-sett’. It is unclear to what extent Pounsay was able to resurrect the mine but Hemery talks of it failing and the site turning back to a farm. The farm can have been barely a better prospect than the mine – it can’t be easy eeking out a living in this location, with only a cottage-garden sized potato plot to grow food on. RAF aerial photos from 1946 show the place as ruinous nearly eighty years ago as it is now, so I would hazard a guess that it didn’t last long as a farm.

And one final question – who was Caroline?

This section of the trans-moor track has got me thinking about this landscape as both a forgiving and an unforgiving place in the middle of the moor, and a place that feels both connected, yet disconnected.

In the medieval, this basin, nestling within the Dartmoor upland, seems to have offered a ‘peaty oasis’. Unlike most other parts of the high moor, occupied only seasonally, people settled here, in permanent farmsteads. Indeed, the very name ‘Merripit’ means pleasant hollow, and in this essence gives a feeling of blithe bounty, but only in comparison to the harsh and inhospitable moor that encircled it.

There was surely a lived experience for these moorland residents, of being on an island; making a living in a highland sea, of rolling and swelling tors, in their place of safety and harbour. And in this place’s island-separation, there is a feeling of it being otherworldly. This is not a place like others. It exists beyond. Is this experience of the ancient tenements – an experience of being in a place apart – that nurtured its magical history? Was it this merry pit’s separation that allowed those in touch with the old ways – with their powers to charm – to be valued, needed and persist in numbers until a modern age?

However, when the turnpike track emboldened enlightened industrial entrepreneurs to try and wring more from the moor, this ‘merry pit’ was found to be unforgiving. It is, after all, a place that exists on the margins, not just of society, but of productivity. Exploitation attempts for the most part, proved a step too far, having more costs than benefits. In Wheal Caroline, Caroline Cott and the Stannon Venture, it is apparent that not all businesses have the right idea, in the right place, at the right time; and that sometimes the old ways are the most sustainable.

The Route

• Today the only way of following the old trans-moor route is by walking along the road through Postbridge. This is almost certainly straighter than the earlier trans-moor ‘road’, as exemplified by the angular alignment between the clapper bridge to the modern road; the old track must have traversed at the clapper bridge, to the south of the modern road and then proceeded uphill in a north easterly direction towards somewhere between the East Dart Hotel and Dartfordleigh.

• At some point it would have crossed the modern road and approached closer to Higher Merripit. In this regard I disagree with Hemery who has it following a straight course along the line of the turnpike road all the way down Merripit Hill.
• I have shown its approximate position in dashed lines, mainly because Ogilby (1675) clearly shows the road kinking to the right when travelling from the east to Postbridge and approaching a house called Merrey Pit. Donn’s map (1765), also shows this kink and the road travelling close to Higher Merripit (see map extract in Interesting Thing No. 6).

• The track then climbs Merripit Hill until Statts Bridge (formerly a small clapper according to Hemery, 1986, p95), where it turns from the road after the bridge and heads to Caroline Cott.

• Hemery (1986, p95) describes three different possibilities for the course of this track when it approaches the cott. The first, and the one he considers most ancient, follows the line of the Birch Tor and Vitifer mine Leat of 1793 whose contour he thinks was appropriated by the leat builders. This is the line relevant to the trans-moor track, as the other two routes through here (going through the middle of and to the east side of the Caroline Cot enclosure) were 19th century alternatives that came after turn-piking.

Notes

[1] – Cooper (2013) says that from 1577 the second Earl of Bedford chose to reside on a more permanent basis in Devon until his death in 1585, dividing his time between his mansion house in Tavistock, his town house in Exeter and Bedford House in London. Cooper says he was replaced, on his death, as lord lieutenant of Devon by William Bourchier, third earl of Bath, whose house was at Tawstock in north Devon. Official correspondence was carried to and from Bath’s residence via Exeter by mounted messengers retained by the city’s corporation (Cooper, 2014). Did the second Earl of Bedford also have retained messengers between Tavistock and Exeter, who sometimes took the most direct route across the moor?

[2] – Quick suggests the East Dart Hotel was built in the early 19th C, whilst the East Dart Hotel website claims it was built in 1861, neither of which provide a citation. The tithe map of the c. 1840s does not show the building and so it must date later than this.

[3] – Quick relates a ghost story attached to the creation myth of the temperance hotel that involves the landlord pouring away the barrels of beer in the river, a stray black dog drinking the beer and his drunken howling at the moon, with the ghost dog supposedly making the occasional appearance, trying to satisfy his thirst.

[4] – Crossing describes a visit he made to the East Dart Hotel in 1874, which at the time was the Greyhound Inn. He wrote about and published this in 1888. This places a time window on when the pub changed its name and philosophy of drink.

[5] – Mrs Webb shares the same name as the landlord and landlady of the Temperance Hotel – Captain John Webb and Lizzie Webb. There surely must be a likelihood they were related.

[6] – No OS maps show a spring here. Perhaps it was stopped up? If Hemery’s statement is correct, then all the Merripit Farms were located next to springs.

References

Brayshay, M., 1991. Royal post-horse routes in England and Wales: the evolution of the network in the later-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. Journal of Historical Geography, 17 (4), pp.373-389.

Brown, T, 1961. Tales of a Dartmoor Village: Some Preliminary Notes on the Folklore of Postbridge. Transactions of the Devonshire Association. Volume 93, pp194-227.

Cooper, I.D., 2013. Networks, News and Communication: Political Elites and Community Relations in Elizabethan Devon, 1588-1603. PhD Thesis. University of Plymouth.

Cooper, I., 2014. The Speed and Efficiency of the Tudor South‐West’s Royal Post‐Stage Service. History, 99 (338), pp.754-774.

Crofts, J. 1967. Packhorse, Waggon and Post: Land Carriage and Communications under the Tudors and Stuarts. Routledge and Kegan Paul: London.

Crossing, W. 1888. Crossing’s Amid Devonia’s Alps. Edited by le Messurier, B. in the 1974 Edition. David and Charles: Newton Abbot

Crossing, W. (1912). Guide to Dartmoor: A topographical description of the Forest and Commons. Reprinted edition (1990). Peninsula Press: newton Abbot

Curtis, J.P., 2016. Methodism and Abstinence: a History of The Methodist Church and Teetotalism. PhD Thesis, University of Exeter.

Dartmoor National Park Authority, No Date. Postbridge. www.dartmoor.gov.uk. [Accessed 15th Nov 2022]

Dartmoor Trust, The. Higher Merripit. Burnard Collection. Record 3877

East Dart Hotel. 2007-2008. http://www.eastdart.eclipse.co.uk/ [Accessed 14th Nov 2022]

HER^a, no date. Postbridge Clapper Bridge. HER Number MDV5854.

HER^b, no date. Caroline Cott, Water Hill. HER Number MDV6712.

Hodson, D., 2000. The early printed road books and itineraries of England and Wales. Doctoral dissertation, University of Exeter.

Sandles, T. 2016. Postbridge Charmers. Legendary Dartmoor. www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk. 24th April 2016. [Accessed 13^th Nov 2022]

South West Heritage Trust. Assignments. Shares in Wheal Caroline Tin Mine, Lydford, 1825. Devon Archive Catalogue. Reference Number 924B/B/8/30.

Quick, T. 1992. Dartmoor Inns. Devon Books: Tiverton

Yeomans, H., 2011. What did the British temperance movement accomplish? Attitudes to alcohol, the law and moral regulation. Sociology, 45(1), pp.38-53.