The Lich Way: Part 1 – Bellever to Lydford Tor

Following Hemery, E. (1986). The Lych Way. Walking Dartmoor’s Ancient Tracks: A Guide to 28 Routes. Robert Hale: London.

This is the first in a trilogy of blogs about the Lich Way. In actuality, rather than precisely following Hemery’s route I am instead following the path marked on the OS Explorer map. This is very similar to Hemery, but with a few differences. I talk a little bit about routing in these blogs but, I recommend looking at Hemery (1986) and Fleming (2011) if you are interested in specifics, and comments about bad weather diversions.

The Lich Way: Part 2 – Lydford Tor to Coffin Wood

The Lich Way: Part 3 – Coffin Wood to Lydford

Backround

Evidence for the Lich Way

Is the Lich Way real or just a modern construct? Well, as we will see, it is a bit of both. The most substantive evidence connecting a funerary route between central Dartmoor to Lydford comes from the dispensation granted by Bishop Walter Bronescombe of Exeter in 1260 AD to the parishioners of the ancient tenements in the heart of the moor. They petitioned the bishop to allow them to attend the nearer Widecombe church instead of their mother church of St Petroc at Lydford (Hemery, 1986). This was a reasonable request given the size of the parish, how far away they lived from Lydford, and the wild, boggy and hilly ground over which they had to travel to get there. Up until this point, the Medieval parishioners would have had to visit Lydford for all their Christian duties, including, but not exclusively, that of burying their dead.

7 Interesting Things

My mum drops me at Bellever, a starting point for The Lich Way in the middle of Dartmoor, and before she pulls away, I give her my ETA in Lydford for pick-up. I reckon, with a few snack breaks, it will take me about 6 hours. The route is 12 miles in length and so it is a 'big but do-able' walk. I have recently been hobbling around with a condition called Plantar Fasciitis and so I am nervous that my foot won't hold up. I have invested in a pair of new supportive and cushioned walking boots and my heel is on the mend; fingers crossed I will make it to my destination.

1: A Starting Point – The Ancient Tenements

Despite its vague credentials the official Historic Environments Record (HER) and the Ordnance Survey plot a best estimate of the route over the moor (HER, undated^a). They provide neat and unambiguous lines on maps which start at Bellever and end at Lydford – a straightforward A to B. But things are never as straightforward as they seem.

The scatter of blue stars on the map below approximately locates the ancient tenements in the central basin of this huge upland parish, and reveals that, even though the end point of the journey at Lydford might be definitive, the starting point is not so clear cut.

For the most part, the central tenement dwellers would start from the Bellever area or pass from the east over the clapper bridge at Bellever. Those living in the more south westerly tenements at Dunnabridge, Sherberton, Broom Park and Prince Hall, would have taken a different route, converging at Traveller’s Ford over the Cowsic River at Broad Hole (Hemery, 1986). Hemery doesn’t discuss the route taken by those from the more northly tenements – Warner, Hartland and Merripit. They may have come via the clapper bridge at Postbridge and joined up with the Bellever route at the Cherry Brook clapper to use bridging points wherever possible.

The ancient tenements have typically been viewed by scholars as dating to the 13th and 14th centuries because this is as far back as documentary evidence for them goes. It is obvious that they would have had to be around before 1260 otherwise Bishop Bronescombe’s intervention for them to bury their dead at Widecombe does not make any sense. Ideas around how the economy and society of Dartmoor was structured in the middle ages, coupled with place name evidence of the use of Saxon personal names, suggests that many of these tenements date from this earlier Saxon time (Fox, 2012). Some kind of relationship, and therefore a need to travel between this moorland hinterland and the town of Lydford (founded in the 880s AD) would have existed for four hundred years and more before the Bishop’s dispensation.

I begin out along tarmac road from Bellever, with the new bridge and old clapper at my back. The road presently turns into a track between the olden field walls of the ancient tenements. Already, though just starting out, I stop and return my gaze across the East Dart valley to view this enclave in the core of the moor, where the scattered ancient settlements worked their existence.

2: Death, Belief and Magic

To understand this path as a corpse road is as much about inhabiting the medieval mind as the medieval landscape. The contemporary users of the Lich Way saw death very differently to us. Archaeological finds and fragments in manuscripts confirm this. Until recently, the magic and superstition of the past has been neglected by archaeologists and ‘serious’ historians in what has been termed ‘ritual phobia’. An award winning paper by Roberta Gilchrist (2008) reviewed the evidence of magic in medieval burials and in this section I draw on her fascinating work.

As Christianity took hold in England the church attempted to regulate popular pagan customs around death. In the conversion period, as society shifted from heathen to Christian beliefs, it is also the case that it tolerated, and even assimilated magical practices, for example through cults of relics. Whilst grave goods in this period declined, charms, amulets, and various other physical objects were still occasionally placed with the dead. In addition to appropriating more benign magical practices, it is at this time that the church began to take over the domain of the demonic and occult elements of folkloric practice.

Rituals, charms and spells, as simple folk magic were often linked with female practitioners, but these transferred to the domain of clergy elites who ‘developed an intellectual branch of magic that involved long, intricate rituals‘ (Gilchrist, 2008). Clerical necromancers, in taking over this occult role and adding complexity, made exclusive and esoteric previously ‘folk owned’ belief. That monks practiced these arts is well documented in manuscripts. Examples include the gathering of demons and spirits of the dead, the calling of winds to tell hidden secrets, and divination over the dead or their clothing to prevent their taking vengeance (ibid)

Folkloric death magic had the goal of protection rather than occult conjuring of demons. Gilchrist says that medieval stories often talk of ways to prevent evil people who had come to a bad end returning to terrorise the living. The corpses of vulnerable innocents, such as children, were singled out for special protection from malevolence in the afterlife as they were considered not to have the strength to protect themselves. There is also an element to the magic that implies sorcery to heal the body after death, such as applying ointments into the palms of the deceased. They appear to have thought that corpses could experience bodily torture in purgatory and that by healing the corpse, the departed soul would be more resilient to the suffering of purgatory.

It is clear from the frequency of folklore relating to death and the dead that within the medieval mind, there was a tension between supernatural beliefs and spiritual beliefs. The church taught that after death the soul left the earth and was bound for heaven, hell or purgatory, whilst folklore believed the dead could hang around and cause trouble. The ‘unruly dead’, as Devereux writes (2003), inhabited and shared the landscape in the medieval mind. Whilst in church the populace were taught an abstract cosmology of life after death in the company of the Lord, outside of church the fear of ghosts walking by night was very real.

Here, where at one time the track would have spilled onto open moor, it now hits a blockade of conifers that obscure the scene and alter the acoustics. I log the 19th century Bellever plantation in my mind's eye and imagine the landscape stripped of pine, with Bellever Tor sentinel over my path.

3: Preparing the Corpse

The Lich Way story begins with death, and so, upon death, how was the corpse prepared for its final journey? Ideally this would occur at home because this was part of having a ‘good death’ which was seen as very important. But what does a good death mean? In the medieval, people aspired to a good death because this helped reduce time spent in purgatory and hastened getting into heaven (Gordon, 2013). A good death, ideally, meant dying surrounded by family and friends. A will would be written on the deathbed and last rites of confession performed. Communion and ‘Extreme Unction’ would be performed – the anointing of the dying person by a priest – and a dedication of the soul to God would be uttered at the point of death (ibid). A candle or taper would be burned to keep away demons. However, we may want to be slightly sceptical of how closely people in this remote moorland would have adhered strictly to what was set out as ‘ideal’ in manuscripts.

Whatever rites and Christian ritual were performed, the body was then washed in an act of purification. It may have been anointed with lotions and potions, in accordance with their practical and ritual value, such as rosemary, whose pleasant smell might hide odours, but which was also associated with remembrance and eternal life. Bodies were then placed in a winding sheet – for the poor this would be a household sheet. If folkloric practice crept in (and it is known that old ways competed with Christian ones) then a charm or amulet or other meaning-laden object could have been wrapped up with the corpse at this stage, or maybe a coin placed in the mouth.

Charms were aided in their work by herbs and other objects in a private performance over the deceased, often administered by a woman, be this a relative, a healer or a midwife. Customs of the past talk of women keening over the body and incanting charms.

‘Hast thou sung diabolical songs (carmina) over the dead? Thou shalt do penance for twenty days’.

Regino of Prüm’s Ecclesiastical Disciplines, c 906 AD, cited in Gilchrist (2008)

As Christianity embedded by the 11th C such ‘cunning’ practices became more frowned upon and instead the clergy took over, challenging the intimate relationship between women and the dead:

‘With increasing emphasis placed on the belief in purgatory, prayers and masses replaced the popular charms and folk customs performed by women. Monks and priests became the new intermediaries who connected the living with the dead.‘

Gilchrist, 2008

Even with belief in Christ, it is likely that some of these old ways persisted and continued to be performed in rituals over the dead. The song the ‘Lychwake Dirge’, a written record of which dates to 1686, exemplifies this (Wikipedia). The lyrics, on the surface, are Christian. They tell of the hazards the deceased soul faces in its journey ‘across the bridge of death’, and are thought to serve both the purpose of easing the passage of the soul through purgatory, and as a warning to the living to lead a good life (Duntemann, undated). However, the symbolism in the poem is considered to be pre-Christian, giving the dirge a pagan origin.

My route takes a ninety-degree turn, crosses the highway, across the boggy ground of Gawler Brook and on to Powdermills. Where once the way would have gone straight ahead over the Cherry Brook clapper to rise towards Longaford Tor, now enclosure and private ownership force this deviation.

It is also said that the ground here has become increasingly boggy over the decades and this is given as reason for the forced diversion. I feel disappointed that so soon on my journey, I am aware I am not walking in the footsteps of the medieval church goers.

4: Not Just a Corpse Road

The Lich Way is a powerful concept; of a shrouded or coffin clad corpse, slowly being manhandled over moorland. In naming it the Lich Way (a modern affectation?) this collapses the route down to having a singular deathly purpose. This was not true. Death was only one of the ways in which the people at the time had cause to attend their church. Back then it was not customary to get married in church, but people would certainly have travelled to church for baptisms, which were seen as extremely important. As the middle ages progressed the concept of original sin gained hold and so it was imperative to get babies baptized as soon as possible. I find it particularly revealing that, in conceptualising this route, we attach all our focus on the glamour of death, and don’t seem give a fig about birth. We imagine the challenges of this journey when carrying a corpse, but not the challenges of the journey with a new-born baby. Is this motif of death a modern perspective on a church way, or did the importance of sorrow, ritual, folklore,and memorialisation mean that a deathly focus and framing of this route in both the mind and landscape was also true for our medieval forebears?

In trying to conceptualise this Lich Way I have tried to find out how often people were required to attend their church for worship as I wanted to get an idea as to how often people might have had to walk this route for reasons other than death. The answer doesn’t seem to be straightforward, partly because the requirements in say 900 AD in the early days of the Lydford Burgh may have been quite different to that in 1260 AD when this route itself demised. For people living near to their church it appears normal to attend church every week, but I don’t know what would have been the acceptable minimum requirements for a remote parish like Lydford. Surely these poor people would not have been expected to walk to Lydford every Sunday? But would they have been expected to walk there once a month? Even if the bar was set very low on ‘normal’ church attendance, if we add in baptisms and funerals, people would have had to make the journey to St Petroc’s several times a year. The term Church Way is therefore a more helpful moniker for this route in that it is more inclusive of the religious reasons why people would have been travelling over the moor to the town.

It also needs to be remembered that it wasn’t just for religious business that people might be heading to Lydford. The powerful and important town held both Forest and Stannary Courts and was a centre of administration and justice (Hemery, 1986). Beyond administrative and legal business there were numerous other secular reasons why some people might have had cause to be on the road to Lydford from this far-flung eastern boundary of the parish, including the market and other trade.

Finally, even after Walter Bronescombe’s intervention of 1260 AD, new tenements in the East Dart basin, established up to the 16th century did not enjoy the same privileges of the ancient tenements, and they did not have leave to attend Widecombe; so, even after 1260, as the centre of the moor became increasingly populated, this travail to Lydford church was still necessary for some.

I try to follow the straight green dashed line of the Lich Way on my OS map beyond Powdermills. There is no clear 'way' to follow. Hemery observes the same. He advocates a curved route over Stinnon's Hill to reach the ridge crest just north of Littaford Tors and then to descend, clipping the end of the scrap of trees at the north of Wistman's Wood. But I had not read my Hemery before setting out so I followed the more northerly line as shown on my map towards Longaford Tor.

I take my first sit down and drink coffee from my thermal cup. It was here I spoke to the only people who would cross my path all day; five men who had been wild camping. The two at the rear spoke with me. They had never camped on Dartmoor before and it had been a wet night. They had no idea what I was talking about when I said I was walking the Lich Way. They bifurcated south to Two Bridges. I set off again a minute later, heading north west.

5: Institutionalising Death

From the late 9th C the church, in a Christianizing Anglo Saxon kingdom, began to insist on burial in sanctified ground (Hadley and Buckberry, 2005). It is in this context we need to view the Lich Way to Lydford; emerging as a ‘way of the dead’ at a time of when the church began to gradually take control of the specifics of interment. Late Saxon legal documents demonstrate this authority. In the reign of King Æthelred (1008 AD) a burial tax called ‘soul-scot’ is codified, in which requirements are set out to ensure payments should be made to the minster church (Hadley and Buckberry, 2005). Earlier records suggest that similar such arrangements had been in place for quite some time, for example a late 9th C record of the collection of soul-cot, taken at the grave side.

That these legal documents explicitly set out the soul-cot requirements is probably as a result of the competition that was going on amongst the clergy over the bodies of the dead. Manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries show that the place of burial was being used for financial profit and territorial parish gain, with the historic record telling of ‘monks and nuns kidnapping dying people, exhuming and stealing corpses at night, and fighting each other with candlesticks‘ in order to be able to bury them on their patch (Zadoro-Rio, 2003). This is confirmed in the writing of Ælfric of Evesham c.1006 AD that states:

‘Some priests are glad when men die and they flock to the corpse like greedy ravens when they see a carcass, in wood or in field; but it is fitting for [a priest] … to attend the men who belong to his parish at his church; and he must never go into another’s district to any corpse, unless he is invited’

In Hadley and Buckberry (2005).

Given how remote the ancient tenements were to Lydford it is enticing to imagine what the people of these far-removed dwellings felt about the need to bury their dead in a sanctified grave at St Petroc’s, so far away. That the religious and societal pressure to do so strengthened over the centuries was certainly true. By 1260 AD, when parishioners were given leave to attend Widecombe instead, medieval expectations around following Christian rules would have been high.

It is enthralling to imagine the drama that may have attended death in these ancient tenements. What was the balance between compulsion and encouragement, in which priests of nearby parishes may have been hovering for a sniff of death? One can also imagine the influence of secular leaders and neighbours in the mix, adding opinions about where and how to bury – be this to follow the letter of the church law, to bend the rules and opt for the easier option in a nearer parish, or perhaps, at least in the early days of church cemetery burials, to continue with the old ways. Given the human instincts for ritual and ceremony around death, and the social elements of community and conformity, these centuries are a fascinating period of transition to contemplate the context of death in society.

In the specific context of the Lich Way, it is not until 1253 AD that written evidence for a church at Widecombe starts (Widecombe and District Local History Group, 2003). Was Bishop Bronescombe’s dispensation of 1260 AD a reaction to a newly formed church there; a more suitable spiritual home for these ancient tenement dwellers? In the Saxon era there was a distinction between those churches with and those without burial rights, so perhaps this intervention by Bronescombe was instead a reaction to an earlier church at Widecombe being ‘upgraded’ with greater ecclesiastical powers? Whatever the exact chronology …

‘These developments must have had major implications for the social rituals and commemorative practices of local communities, and if the new foundations were problematic for minster churches they must sometimes have been contentious among the laity‘

Hadley and Buckberry, 2005.

What seems important here is that, by the end days of the Lich Way, in a world that had left paganism behind, and in which the institutionalised Christian way was the only way, no matter where you died, your body was destined for a church graveyard. This was not so much of a problem for the folk of ordinary sized parishes, but for the spawling wilderness parish of Lydford, this made things a bit trickier.

Refreshed, I head down into the valley of the West Dart. The ground under my feet becomes miry as I track north west, picking up paths through vegetation that form, then un-form. It is my turn now to deviate from the certainty of the OS marked Lich Way route and against Hemery's advice. I cross the river at the headweir of the Devonport leat. This is slightly south of where the route was supposed to go but as Hemery (1986) says, there are no signs of steps across the river now, and, with the flow low, the crossing at the weir is stable and easy. I decide that this is acceptable and within the ethos of the walk because, even though the weir wouldn't have existed in Lich Way days, travellers to Lydford would certainly have chosen the path of greatest ease.

6: Naming Corpse Roads

Corpse roads go by many names. These are known to us through maps, historical records and oral traditions. Our Lydford route is called the Lich Way or Lych Way, after the Old English word for corpses – liches. Other ‘ways of the dead’ get called Coffin Road, Corpse Path, Bier Road, Burial Road, Funeral Road, and in Ireland, Mass Road. In Saxon parlance it was termed dæda wæg; literally a Death Way. Seeing as, in most cases these roads to church were not just journeyed upon solely for funerals, but also for baptism and normal church attendance, these routes can also have the more encompassing epithet of Church Road or Church Way (Devereux, 2003).

For those interested in corpse roads they are widespread. Devereaux (2003) gives summaries of 28 routes from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, spanning a number of counties including eleven from Devon and Cornwall whilst Cleaver and Park (2018) provide a comprehensive look at sixteen corpse roads in Cumbria.

The topography here is steep and there is no easy route out of the valley. I imagine the difficulty of this nip whilst trying to bear a body. I look around, still unsure exactly where the path went. The angle of the climb gradually flattens and I am rewarded with the grandeur of the Beardown Tors. But I am not headed for this triumvirate of granite. I pass them to my left and head for the base of the compact Lydford Tor which surely must be so named to link it on the line of this path to the town from which it takes its name. On this, Hemery says: 'at no other point on the route is a tor of any significance so nearly approached' and that it must be 'a certain guide to the ancient way' (Hemery, 1983).

7: Funerary Transport

That great effort and care was expended by people taking the dead to a church burial is attested by Semple and Williams (2015). They cite an example from the late Anglo-Saxon of guild members who were responsible for their brethren who died as much as 60 miles away. A company of up to thirty men were obliged to ride with the dying or dead man, carried in a cart. A cart would have been an impossible mode of transport for the majority of the Lich Way. Bearing the corpse on a stretcher, known as a bier, seems also to be a rather impractical when one thinks of the distance and terrain over which needed to be travelled.

Writing about a corpse road in Cumbria a 19th C historian, James Stockdale, preserves a memory of a different mode of transport in which the parishioners of the Furness area used sledge biers that could be pulled over the ground, but he noted ‘in passing over the fords of rivers, the corpse has been known to have been washed off the sledge, and lost for considerable time‘ (Cleaver and Park, 2018).

The most likely mode of transport over Dartmoor surely must have been using a pack horse or mule, possibly embalmed and wrapped in a sheep hide to stop the body from smelling (Debben, pers com). This would be the only practical way of making this journey. But at what point would the body be taken off the packhorse for its final, more dignified approach into Lydford? Devereux (2003), an academic expert on routeways and cognitive archaeology, writing about this Dartmoor Lich Way, asserts that the dead would be brought by this mode as far as Coffin Wood where the body would be transferred to a coffin for the remainder of the journey to Lydford. He states that:

‘the procedure seems to be that someone would go ahead of the funeral procession and forewarn specialist pall-bearers at Coffin Wood of its approach. These would then meet the party with an empty coffin, the transaction would be undertaken, and the corpse in its coffin borne across the river‘

Devereux, 2003

I feel less certain than Devereux. Coffins were not much used for normal poor people this far back in history. We will also see later in this trilogy of blogs that the name Coffin Wood, whilst curious, is perhaps not so definitively and obviously linked to an inheritance from this medieval corpse road function as may be assumed. However, if corpses were put in a coffin at some point, for a final dignified approach into Lydford, then the packhorses would have to be replaced by men to do this carrying. How the body was being carried and at what point transitions to various modes of transport are details of relevance because they effect considerations of the route and the difficulties it imposed. Fording a river, crossing via stepping stones, negotiating steep hills, passing through confined spaces and over stiles are all different propositions if with packhorse or on foot with a bier.

Conclusion

This first blog in a trilogy of three about the Lich Way has taken me from Bellever to as far as Lydford Tor. In doing so I have learnt about the historical context for why the Lich Way existed, have begun to explore the medieval mind-set, and the practicalities of undertaking this journey. Part 2 will tell of the most remote section of the route through Traveller’s Ford and on to White Barrow before descending off the high moor to the sinisterly named Coffin Wood. In this next blog I am going to consider in more detail how medieval people handled death through religion, folklore and magic. I am also going to talk about funerary paraphernalia like shrouds and coffins and why Coffin Wood might not have such an obvious connection to this Way of the Dead as the name suggests.

References

Biggs, S. (2014). The Three Living and the Three Dead. Medieval Manuscripts Blog, British Library, 16 January 2014.

Cleaver, A. and Park, L. (2018). The Corpse Roads of Cumbria. Chitty Mouse Press.

Devereux, P. (2003). Fairy Paths & Spirit Roads: Exploring Otherworldly Routes in the Old and New Worlds, Chrysalis Book Group: London.

Drieshen, C. (2019). Magical Seals in the English Book of Hours. Medieval Manuscripts Blog, British Library, 18 July 2019.

Duntemann, J. (undated). Understanding Lyke Wake Dirge. http://www.duntemann.com/likewakepage.htm

Fleming, A. (2011). The Lich Way: A Path for all Seasons. Transactions of the Devonshire Association. 143, pp91-103.

Fox, H. (2012). Dartmoor’s Alluring Uplands: Transhumance and Pastoral Management in the Middle Ages, University of Exeter Press: Exeter.

Gilchrist, R. (2008) Magic for the dead? The archaeology of magic in later medieval burials. Medieval Archaeology, 52. pp. 119-159

Gordon, S. (2013). The Walking Dead in Medieval England: Literary and Archaeological Perspectives. PhD Thesis, University of Manchester

Hadley, D.M. and Buckberry, J. (2005). Caring for the dead in late Anglo-Saxon England. In Tinti, F. Ed., Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Vol 6), pp.121-147. Boydell Press.

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

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

Historic Environment Record (undated)^a. Ancient trackway known as The Lichway. MDV122712 https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV122712&resourceID=104

Semple, S. and Williams, H. (2015). Landmarks of the Dead: Exploring Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geographies. In Clegg Hyer, M. and Owen-Crocker, G.R. The Material Culture of the Built Environment on the Anglo Saxon World. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool.

Widecombe and District Local History Group (2003). All Along, Down Along, Widecombe Way. Hedgerow Print: Crediton.

Wikemedia (undated). Lyke-Wake Dirge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyke-Wake_Dirge

Zadora-Rio, E. (2003). The making of churchyards and parish territories in the early-medieval landscape of France and England in the 7th-12th centuries: a reconsideration. Medieval Archaeology, 47 (1), pp.1-19.