The King Way: Part 1 -Tavistock to Mary Tavy

Hemery’s ‘Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks: A guide to 28 routes’, Track 11. This section is from Tavistock to the Mary Tavy Inn. 3.4 miles

Background

The King Way is an ancient route linking Tavistock and Okehampton. It takes a path through what would have been largely open moorland territory, a little to the east of another North-South road that went through settlements such as Brentor and Lydford. Hemery says that he sees the road as:

“being principally a riding track where gradients and routing would in general would have been unsuited to coaching traffic”

Hemery (1986, p124)

We cannot know for definite how the route acquired its name but Hemery explores some interesting history that is apposite. In 1630 King Charles I received a petition requesting the need to provide ‘post-horses’ in the western areas of the country for the ‘King’s Posts’.Whilst improvements to the King’s Mail were made on some routes in the south west:

“it wasn’t until 1720 however, that a regular mounted postboy service was established between Okehampton (then on the London-Launceston postal routes) and Tavistock. In the meantime, The King’s Messengers had carried official posts on horseback between the two towns when needed.”

I agree with Hemery that the horse-back postal riders would prefer this route through more open country than that to the west, running as it did through the enclosed and muddy lanes linking up between the villages. He goes on to recount an alluring oral history given to him by Mr Norman Fry of Lydford, who:

“received the tradition from his father (b. 1874) who had received it from his eighteenth-century grandfather; it stated quite firmly that the King Way is so named ‘because the King’s Mail was always taken that way before the regular postal service began”

The route would not have just been for the postal service. It was also a pack horse route with sections, particularly those closest to Tavistock and Okehampton, being shared with other routes. For example, close to Tavistock, the King Way followed the route of Old Exeter Road, known to previous generations as Exeter Lane [I am going to use the name Exeter Lane throughout for the sake of consistency]. The King Way as a complete route fell out of use by the 19th C, as did Exeter Lane’s function as a main road. It can be seen on a Bedford Estate map of c1760 clearly showing the course taken for anyone heading NE out of the town via Wringworthy. In 1762 the Tavistock Turnpike Trust was established and between then and the 1820s road development proceeded, in various stages, leading to the King Way’s inevitable demise.

I am not going to lie, I feel the King Way is a hard walk to sell. If I were an estate agent I might attempt to down-play its faults and lead with its unique selling points. But you would just end up feeling let down. Let’s get its problems with this route out of the way and embrace it for what it is.

Apart from in a middle section over open moorland, the greater proportion of the King Way follows roads, some of which are busy and really not the kind of places anyone would find peace, relaxation (and safety!) in walking. There are quite a few portions of the route between Tavistock and the Dartmoor Inn at Lydford which have been lost to development – domestic and agricultural. The walker can choose to follow the route as close to the original as possible but on nearby roads and footpaths , or to embark on lots of little detours to take glimpses from accessible places the line of the lost road. The second strategy tries hard to honour the King Way as well as possible, but it results in a fitful ramble. You may be more ballsy than me, but I am not the kind of person that likes to rock-up at a land-owner’s house and ask for permission to cross their land, so just get on with it as best you can.

7 Interesting Things

1. The Exeter Inn

The King Way departs Tavistock from the King Street/Market Street area of the town. This is a quiet part of the town centre today. It lies ‘behind’ and feels ‘sub’ in relation to the main shopping streets. It was not always so. In the years after the founding of the abbey (974 AD), a hamlet developed and expanded here (Kirkpatrick, 2005). This was the energetic secular centre of gravity of Tavistock, where goods were bought and sold. Trading here was further embedded by Henry 1’s granting of a market charter in 1105.

It is in this thriving part of town that the 18th C Exeter Inn was built, more recently known as the British Legion and the Tavy Club. However, Hemery cites a local historian who said that the Inn was 17th C in date. The building doesn’t look to be of that era to me but perhaps it replaced a former inn on this site? The name of the Exeter Inn won’t be a coincidence. As Gerry Woodcock (2014) says, it was so called and situated because it was on the coaching and postal route that led to Exeter. It may well have been where the post was brought before an official post office was established in Tavistock. The name of King Street might not be a coincidence either being, as it is, located at the end of the King Way postal route with its ‘King’s messengers’ and the ‘King’s post’. In Georgian times, the Exeter Inn was considered one of the town’s foremost inns, but the turnpike roads took traffic away from this zone; the pannier market shifted trade to a different part of town; and the coming of the railways meant post went by train. All of these things meant that both the location and function of the Exeter Inn were no longer what people wanted or needed.

2. The Trendle

About half a mile out of town, straddling this old road above Mount Kelly school, is a late Iron Age settlement known as the Trendle. It is a defended settlement rather than a hill-fort because defended settlements were smaller than forts and they only have one defensive bank. The name ‘Trendel‘ is an Old English name meaning circle or ring.

Although slightly damaged by Exeter Lane passing through its centre, so much more mutilation has since occurred. Not only does a Victorian railway line cut a thick chord through its northern quarter but a number of post war bungalows and school buildings have also been constructed over it. Previous excavations of the site have turned up a number of bronze artefacts including a brooch, a decorative brooch pin-head, and a socketed axe.

Although I said that the Trendle has been damaged by Exeter Lane running through it, looking again at the map, I do wonder if this road actually originated in the Iron Age as the track serving this Iron Age community? A millennia before the abbey and town established, perhaps Exeter Lane is in fact one of Tavistock’s oldest roads?

3. Why Exeter Lane?

The modern main road out of Tavistock towards Okehampton follows the flat, well-maintained course of the Tavy corridor. It feels like such an obvious route for a road. So why was Exeter Lane the main route in times gone by? It feels plain wrong. Nobody would dream of heading to Exeter that way these days. I speculated above that this road may have been originally trodden into existence as far back in the Iron Age to serve the Trendle. What would the environment have been like back then?

Iron Age settlements were typically sited on dryer hilltops with good vantage. Movements to and from the hill top communities would have therefore formed trackways along the higher ground. Although in places roads are constructed across waterlogged ground, such locations weren’t ideal for communications and pulling carts. Such ‘upper’ roads persisted to avoid the waterlogged valley bottoms. Although the floodplain of the Tavy around Tavistock is well-drained today, in the past it would have been different. The valley has been much silted up as a result of deforestation and mining and, more recently drainage engineering and channelisation of the river has occurred (Thorndycraft et al, 2004; Lewin, 2010). All of these things mean that the valley bottom is dryer and more stable than it would have been long ago. Abbey owned woodland seems to have persisted here, known as the Park Wood. Sandwiched between Exeter Lane and the Tavy, this historically documented wood survives today in placenames – Parkwood Road and Parkwood Cottages. Roads through woodlands were not liked by the medieval traveller. I will let Rackham explain

‘Medieval England, like modern Detroit, was dangerous: the traveller could expect to be mugged… travellers had a strong and persistent fear of woods and wood-pastures. Main roads avoided the vicinity of woods where possible.‘

Rackham (1986), p269

So where would you rather tread your feet and pull your cart? The soggy, dangerous, wooded valley bottom, or the open, deforested, dry hillside? Given all this, the route along Exeter Lane is definitely favourable.

4. Around the Walla Brook

Beyond the Trendle is the valley of the Walla Brook. This area is now associated with the Wilmonstone name as the quarry and the railway viaduct here have taken it from the nearby farmstead. This stretch is a readymade setting for the horror writer, with a ruinous and sinister glamour. As Exeter Lane descends to the brook things start to get weird. Decaying sheds, rusting automotives, degenerating industrial workshops and strewn fly-tipping comprise the scene, observed from above by the imposing viaduct. It is an almost entirely masculine landscape, if places can have a gender.

Rising the other side of Walla Brook the preternatural continues with a cottage so engulfed in ivy that it is barely visible even when you stand beside it. Just to put the forbidding cherry on the cake, as I walked in the drizzle along this stretch I saw approaching a hunchbacked octogenarian with wild grey hair and more than a whisper of madness about her. As we passed I smiled and said hello. I got no response but she looked towards me and I observed her shakily applied red lipstick, tracing an erratic line around her pinched mouth; the scarlet make-up was so entirely discordant with everything else about her attire and context. I walked on and wondered if she had emerged from the decrepit cottage? It felt as if she should have.

5. Wilminstone

Wilminstone, has an old heritage, probably Saxon, and is one of seven tithings in Tavistock Parish represented in the abbot’s Hundred Court (Finberg, 1969, p52). The term ‘tithing’ means ten hides, with a hide being a family. So a tithing is (roughly) a unit of ten family groups. The tithing was the most basic territorial and legal unit in Medieval society and was also used in Saxon society and was called frankpledge (which I have come across in historical novels but never understood what it meant). Tithings were responsible for community policing – pursuing suspects and presenting crimes at court. Their function is therefore primarily legal not fiscal. I did get a bit confused when reading about tithings as I was conflating them with the more commonly known term ‘tithes’. The reason for this is that they share the same etymological root – with tithes being the collection of one tenth of an income as taxes. Apologies for the historical aside but I was getting muddled and thought it worth sorting out.

Although it possesses an ancient heritage, the landscape of Wilminstone today is much more modern. The road and hedges here are the biggest giveaway. Take a look at this map extract above – look at how straight the road passing though Wilminstone to Mana Butts is. Take a look at the hedgerows in the photograph – these are not old Devon holloways of earthen banks and mixed trees and herbs, they are the Beech hedges, typical of the enclosure movement. With no historic listings for the buildings, these appear to have been re-developed too, probably in the late 18th or early 19th C. The impression is a much ‘cleaner’ and more regimented agricultural landscape in character than that of higgledy-piggledy earlier times. And it here, in part due to this agricultural re-vamping, that the King Way is temporarily lost. It would have followed a line through the fields to Wringworthy but now not a trace of it is evident.

6. Wringworthy

I didn’t get to explore Wringworthy in person because there are no longer any rights of way that lead to and from it. However, as evidenced by the Bedford Estate Map (extract below), the Exeter Lane/King Way went right through it. Whilst no vestige of this route remains here its passage between Wilminstone and Wringworthy is further attested by the following record from 1843 which , almost like a death certificate, confirms the expiry of our road:

“Stopping up road between Wilminstone Borough over Wringworthy Bridge (River Burn) to the Tavistock to Okehampton Turnpike road.”

Devon Archives (1843).

However, within just a few decades, travellers in far greater quantities than ever before would start to speed through this very same space, on trains, filling the valley air with their noise and the smell of coke. In 1865 the Launceston Railway opened and was joined only slightly later by the London and South Western Railway in 1876. The railway lines crossed, London track over Launceston track, right at this point, before merging into one just a few hundred metres north.

Wringworthy has portions of the farmhouse that date to the early 16th C but the farmstead is recorded in Domesday (1086) as ‘the land of Wereinguerda, attached to Manor of Tavi’. Historic building appraisals speculate that the current building may be but a former wing of the main house demolished in the late 17th/18th C .

7. The Mary Tavy Inn

The Mary Tavy Inn, as well as being used by the galloping post-boys conveying the King’s mail, would also have served plodding packhorse traffic between Tavistock and Okehampton. Possibly dating to the 15th century the inn was known as the Buller’s Arms until the end of the 19th C and the Elliot Hotel for a while before that. It stands on a junction called Lane Head with a road leading down the the historic centre of Mary Tavy.

Three cottages adjoined the inn but these have long been demolished. There was also a smithy here. This would have been an ideal location, what with all that passing hoof-trade. And where better to put your feet up than in the inn whilst your horse was shod or your cart mended? Someone else who put his feet up, but not in the bar, was a former Blacksmith. He lived in one of the now demolished cottages. Caught steeling sheep from the moor the man swung by his neck on Gibbet Hill (Quick, 1992) .

Route

• Start on Market Street at the little car park. Notice the 18th C coaching house on King St. This used to be called the Exeter Inn (1).

• Walk up Pym Street , cross Drake Road and shimmy right to join Old Exeter Road (3). Notice the milestone on the corner with Elbow Lane.
• The road rises by 18th and then 19th C terraced housing, then newer housing until it emerges into the countryside with the odd detached house further out. It crosses under the railway bridge and later over the railway. At this point you are at the Trendle, but don’t expect to be able to see anything of it! (2)

• The road descends into the valley of the Walla Brook (4). Notice the railway viaduct through the woods to your left.
• Cross straight over at the junction and continue along this stretch for about 1 km. The road runs on the elevated hillside above the valley on a steep bluff. It then descends, passing once again under the railway. Keep straight on passing a junction that leads up to Wilminstone Farm. This is the point at which the old King Way/Exeter Lane would have diverged with the current route, heading off to your left, crossing the fields and the modern Mana Butts Road, across the farmland at Wilminstone Hall (5)and on to Wringworthy (6).
• You will need to continue along the road where it emerges at a T junction at Wilminstone Hall. Explore the landscape from the road but you won’t be able to trace the route of the original road any further at this point.

• Between here and Mary Tavy you can pick up the King Way again at the point where it would have joined what is now the A386 and follow it up to the Mary Tavy Inn. This is a besy section of road and very ill suited to pedestrians and so I would not advise it.

Alternative route from Wilminstone Hall to the Mary Tavy Inn – turn right at the T Juntion and head down hill until you are nearly at the main road. Instead, join the Route 27 cycleway. This runs parallel to the road. Follow this until Harford Bridge when you can leave it and swap onto the West Devon Way that runs north through fields up to the old centre of Mary Tavy. Follow the road past the church and then at the junction turn left and walk up the hill to the Mary Tavy Inn.

References

Finberg, H.P.R. (1969). Tavistock Abbey: A study in the social and economic history of Devon. Augustus M. Kelly: New York.

Hemery, E. (1986). Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks. A guide to 28 routes. Robert Hale: London.

Heritage Gateway. The Trendle. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV3829&resourceID=104

Heritage Gateway. The Mary Tavy Inn. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV118378&resourceID=104

Heritage Gateway. Wringworthy Farm, Mary Tavy https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV77823&resourceID=104

Kirkpatrick, G. (2005). Nine Centuries of Tavistock Markets. Tavistock Market Charter Group.

Lewin, J., 2010. Medieval environmental impacts and feedbacks: the lowland floodplains of England and Wales. Geoarchaeology, 25 (3), pp.267-311.

Meyrick, R. (undated). Eighteenth Century Devon project: The Eighteenth Century in Peter Tavy: Part 2. Friends of Devon’s Archives. http://www.foda.org.uk/main/projects/eighteenthcentury/petertavy/part2.htm

Quick, T. (1992). Dartmoor Inns. Devon Books: Exeter.

Rackham, O. (1986). The History of the Countryside. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London.

Thorndycraft, V.R., Pirrie, D. and Brown, A.G., 2004. Alluvial records of medieval and prehistoric tin mining on Dartmoor, southwest England. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 19 (3), pp.219-236.

Woodcock, G. (2014). Tavistock’s Yesterdays. No 23. Deer Park productions.