The Lich Way: Part 3 – Coffin Wood to Lydford

This is the final instalment of my long walk following the so called ‘Lich Way’, a Medieval corpse route across Dartmoor. In the previous parts I have travelled from a starting point at Bellever in the moderately protected central basin, and up and across remote and exposed terrain, before descending to the western flank of the moor and the Tavy valley. Using my walk as a narrative, I have explored the evidence for this ancient path; the cementing of the church in the practice and control of death in the transition from pagan to Christian England; practicalities and rituals around death and the transport of bodies; and the spiritual and folklore beliefs and myths that inhabit the route and the Medieval mind.

As we approach Lydford, this last blog post looks towards the destination and the place of burial, the act of burial and the rituals and superstitions surrounding burial. In getting to the cemetery at St Petroc, some reflections are offered about the route people would have taken across the moor – how historical changes may have impacted on ‘the route’ shown on the map, and the thoughts of different authors about the course people would have taken in bad weather. Finally, the Lich Way is placed in the context of its modern-day status as a leisure and heritage route and how this is valued and promoted.

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

This is the second 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, particularly this last one, 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 1 – Bellever to Lydford Tor

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

Background

Fair Weather and Foul – Routes in Good and Bad Conditions

In their successful petition to the Bishop of Exeter in 1260 AD, the holders of the ancient tenements in the central moor, in presenting their case, claimed that they had to travel 8 miles ‘in fine weather, and about fifteen by a roundabout journey in times of storms‘ (in Fleming, 2011). A Devon mile was equivalent to about 1.5 modern miles and so this can be read as 12 miles in fair weather and about 22 miles in foul. On the basis of these distances Fleming puts forward a ‘winter route’ via Sherberton, Olden Bridge, Crazywell Pool, Huckworthy Bridge and Peter Tavy. Fleming acknowledges that the petitioners may have exaggerated the length they had to travel to Lydford in bad weather. I observed similarly from the petitioners of Okehampton in their request to worship at St James’s Chapel instead of All Saints. They claimed they had to travel 1 to 2 [Devon] miles to worship at All Saints, which equates to 2.4 to 4.8 km, when the actual distance is only about 0.7km (see The King Way Part 4). Fleming’s more southerly winter route – a slightly lower altitude journey – is justified because of its use of known bridging points and anciently established routeways. However, there is a more direct way via Merrivale, that also uses ancient bridging points, which Fleming acknowledges as another possibility. This is a bad weather route apparently favoured by Worth.

Hemery (1986) suggests three different options from the Bagga Tor and Willsworthy area, all in relation to where the Lich Way might cross the Tavy. He proposes a Hill Bridge route, a Cataloo Steps route and a Standon Steps route. Hemery and Crossing were supporters of the Hill Bridge option in times of flood. Crossing and Hemery also desribe different routes for the begining, not just the close of the journey. A brief consideration of Hemery’s opinions was given in Part 1. Crossing thought that, for those parishioners that lived in the Hartland, Merripit, and Warner areas around Postbridge, they may have taken a direct line over higher, more northerly ground, across to Rough Tor and Beardown Man. This option crossed the East and West Dart ‘near their sources where they are so small as to not be rendered impassable by floods‘ (Crossing, 1912).

In this blog I have followed the route shown on the OS Explorer map, which is similar to Hemery’s Cataloo Steps route. This is a reasonably direct fair weather route, but with some allowances made for modern rights of way restrictions. Obviously, in doing this walk and writing about it, I have spent some time reflecting on the route. It seems to me that identifying a shortest route to Lydford is far less problematic than the myriad of possibilities that start to present themselves when hypothesising about alternative longer, bad weather options. With people funnelling onto the track to Lydford from different locations, and with the weather forcing travellers onto longer diversions when rivers ran high, I think it is important to remember that there is no simple single path to follow. There is no definitive Lich Way route, and to seek one is a fool’s errand.

7 Interesting Things

I pick my way over boulders and roots upstream on the east bank of the Tavy from Coffin Wood and cross the river over the wooden footbridge at Standon Steps. This is not the Lich Way route marked on the map but it is one of the three alternatives suggested by Hemery. From the bridge the lane is steep and enclosed by granite walls. I look out for where the intended track shown on the map comes from the un-crossable Cataloo Steps; the route I had wanted to take. I do this section in reverse. I cut diagonally across the first field before the way aligns with the field edge in a distinct hollow down to the riverbank.

I contemplate Cataloo Steps for a while from this west bank then, turning my back I return the way I came. The footpath here - known, according to Devereux (2003) as Corpse Lane - is slightly sunken and avenued by shrubby trees. Someone local tends this path with love. A patch of grass in the corner of the field is mown into lawn, and henge-like stones placed as benches for walkers to sit and contemplate the view to Bagga Tor in the distance. Regaining the lane to Higher Willlsworthy Farm, I look back over my left shoulder and see a miniscule and ancient-looking window built into the side of the barn, incongruous in the agricultural wall.

1: Taking a Rest

Just as we, when on a long journey, require a pit stop at a service station, so might Willsworthy have been to Medieval wayfarers. There are fragments of an ancient chapel re-used here, like the simple small window in the barn at Higher Willsworthy Farm (HER^a). This place is recorded as having a manor of ‘Wilfleurde’ in Domesday (HER^b). Of this matter Hemery writes:

“I have always regarded as important the question of rest-stages on Dartmoor’s long-distance tracks … Rest and refreshment for the living, a hallowed place for the dead, feed for any horses in the cortege – all this would have been available at Willsworthy.”

Hemery, 1986

Not a great deal is known about the purposes of the many medieval chapels that used to punctuate the countryside. Turner (2006), writing about the early Christian landscape of Devon, Cornwall and Wessex, cites various examples; some located in former pagan burial grounds, some as hermitages, others as markers of territorial boundaries and, perhaps the most likely raison d’être in this location, as rest stops for travellers. Was this its purpose? If so, to whom might it have been dedicated? On short winter days, did people overnight here, before pressing on to Lydford, knowing their deceased had a sanctified and safe resting place?

As an aside, I have an opinion about the course of the route the Lich Way might have taken at Willsworthy. Coming up from Cataloo Steps. I think the Lich Way would have taken a straight route rather than doing the little shimmy around Higher Willsworthy Farm that it now takes. Have a look at the map above. Can you see the various offsets in the field boundary along where I have drawn a navy-blue line? I think these are hints at a former direct way, before private ownership, long ago, diverted the path.

Only a hundred metres on tarmac and it is back off road. My path exits to the right, up the side of Willsworthy Brook. I stop briefly to stick my nose into the obsolete pound by the side of the road, probably belonging to the Domesday Wilfleurde Manor. The brook is crossed by a small modern clapper The path wanders up a shady combe into the open air of fields that take me on towards Yellowmead. My presence dawns on the awareness of the cows, as one by one they raise their heads to eye me as I pass. I drop a gear as my legs climb Yellowmead Hill and I make a beeline for the structures of the Willsworthy rifle ranges. As I top out on this hill I can see my destination of Lydford, now clearly in reach. Only a little more than half an hour and I will be there.

I take a sharp left at Willsworthy Camp, leaving moorland for the last time. The path encloses between stone and earth banks of probable middle age date and therefore also bounding ancient Lich Way travellers. I pass by Watervale then take another sharp turn, this time to my right. Tiring now I hobble over the cobbles of Prescombe Farmyard then divert from the farm track into the ravine of an old mine seam that becomes deeper and deeper towards the Lyd. I wonder at its age - was it worked by Victorian miners, Saxon miners, or even Roman miners? Silver, copper and lead are found in this valley and such an accessible vein of precious metal would surely have been spied and worked out at an early date?

2: Straight or Bendy?

It is on this approach to Lydford that I am most unsure of the likely route, but what I do feel certain about is that it is not as it appears ‘officially’ on the map (see the green line on the map below). Would those headed for church really have executed two 90 degree corners? Bends in corpse routes are a matter of dispute – some are thought to have deliberatly had bends incorporated to hinder spirits – but opinion rather than evidence seems to underpin these interpretations.

I will offer my own opinion. I think, for such a long journey, there would not have been any appetite to add unecessary convolusions. I feel that the way either followed that detailed by Hemery, and went straight on at Willsworthy Camp to join up with what is now the main road at Higher Beardown Farm and then on to the ford over the Lyd via the Kitts Mine area (see the yellow line on the map below). Alternatively, it may have diverged at Yellowmead Hill to veer slightly more westward and joined what is now the Prescombe track west of Watervale (see the orange line on map below). Both options offer more direct routes, one on the east, and one on the west of ‘Prescombe’. Prescombe is thought to mean Priest(s) Valley. Is this coincidental or was there a connection between this Church Way on the approach to Lydford, and a place where priests resided, ministering this route?

Of these two potential direct routes, the Hemery option is the most straightforward, and can still be walked today. The Prescombe alternative is more problematic. If the Lich Way did pass here, then the path through the fields SW of Watervale is now gone. But that does not mean there wasn’t one there in the past; paths come and go. At Ingo Brake the Lich Way is shown following a footpath that runs through a ‘worked out’ mine seam.

The chronology of this troubles me. For this to be the Lich Way route this would mean that this mine seam must have been worked-out before the Lich Way route existed. This would make the working of this mineral seam late Saxon or earlier. This is possible and would make the seam very old, which is interesting in itself; most mining in the area is attributed to much later workings. However, if this worked-out lode is 18th/19th C, then the church-goers could not have walked down it. They would have had to pick out a different path down Prescombe to the ford of Lydford . On reflection, I think Hemery’s route is the most likely.

I pop out the bottom of the mine seam, finally at the Lyd, and cross a wooden footbridge. Here is the ford of Lydford - Hlydanforda - from which this special place takes its name. Hlýdan means 'to make a noise, sound, clamour, vociferate' but today the river is modest in its discharge and is peaceable and muted. I make my way up hill, passing the old mill, and beneath the lofty viaduct, heading for Silver Street and the outskirts of the village.

3: Cemetery Geography

Where was the cemetery to which the travellers on the Lich Way were heading for? In prehistory, communities are thought to have buried their dead at the limits of their territory. For the Saxon period, the British archaeological record reveals a diveristy of practice. There are many examples of abandoned cemeteries, cemeteries outside of settlements, multiple cemetery sites within communities (sometimes in association with prehistoric barrows in a form of ritual appropriation of the past), and also pockets of individual graves within settlements. For the early Saxon period this suggests we should not assume the singularity of a single graveyard, its situation next to the church, nor its constancy in one place, based on what we can see in the landscape of today (Zadoro-Rio, 2003). However, by the 10th C, consecrated graves for the most part seem to lie adjacent to their church (Hadley and Buckberry, 2005).

Wherever early Saxon graves were sited, the Christian cemetery certainly ended up around St Petroc’s church. Once again though we must question how the current landscape shapes how we assume the past to be. There is increasing evidence from archaeology that Anglo Saxon cemeteries were spread over a wider area than current graveyard boundaries indicate. It wasn’t until the late Saxon that there was a trend for enclosing cemeteries, and it was at this time that they became smaller. Hadley and Buckberry(2005) suggest that this reduction might go hand in hand with the 10th C proliferation of new churches being consecrated – the idea being that if you have more churches, each one will need to bury fewer people. However …

‘it would probably be a mistake to consider that the churchyard as an institution, was firmly established everywhere in the 11th-12th centuries, or that it constituted the only legitimate place of burial. In fact, the obligation for a Christian to be buried in a churchyard seems to have long remained an object of debate.’

Zadoro-Rio, 2003

The tenth century ecclesiastic forces that started to define singular, church-bound graveyards are part of the developing religious control and power of Christianity over the kingdom in the Middle Ages. However, this quote from Zadoro-Rio suggests that, for the far-flung parishioners of Lydford, the requirement to walk miles to bury their kin at the mother church may only have been insisted upon at a date in the 13th C. It is therefore entirely possible that the Lich Way as a corpse route was a very short-lived imposition.

I slide from Silver Street onto the main road and clock the earthwork bank of the Saxon burgh lurking between the houses on either side of the road. The pale pink pub, The Castle, drips with wisteria, and a trickle of patrons enter and leave. Its neighbour, a real castle of late 12th C maturity, stands simple and square, half immersed in its motte. The people milling about occupy the tourist quadrangle between church, castle, pub and carpark. It is hard to pin down what non-verbal cues mark them out as visitors - the dawdling gait, the 'points of interest' that eyes and feet are drawn to, and the idle yet purposefulness of leisure in the body.

4: Lich Leisure

Walking is a booming activity. Leisure time, retirement time, and ironically, cars, facilitate the opportunity to ramble. Guidebooks, websites and maps provide routes and narratives that entice us with possibilities on the walks we want to do (Dunn, 2020). Phone cameras and Instagram help to polish a hike, packaging our walks into photogenic experiences. To this we might add the urge people have to collect. Just as some people collect things, some people collect walks, particularly ‘named’ walks; the type of walks that can be put on a list and ticked off.

The Lich Way, and other corpse roads, can be seen in this context – as defined paths that feature in print and digital media and which have interesting narratives (e.g. Cleaver and Park, 2018 for the Corpse Roads of Cumbria). People are drawn to narratives and so the theatre of corpse roads, with magic and macabre stories, and the ‘mis-en-scène’ of landscape, buildings and funerary furniture, make corpse roads particularly appealing. For the Lich Way, its proximity to the ‘eerily contorted oaks of Wistman’s Wood’ (Countryfile, 2020) and the [tenuous] link to Coffin Wood are all part of its dangerous, deadly story appeal.

This blog is itself part of this story-making; of ‘selling’ the Lich Way through the telling of its landscape and heritage. Doing the walk in one go was important; mediating my experience by undertaking the distance, and to some extent the effort, as a unified journey. For me, the research is also part of the recreation of the walk, adding layers of meaning to the purpose of a route. Some people walk the Lich Way at night, for the ultimate corpse road immersion experience. After reading Hemery’s account of sorrowful souls at Traveller’s Ford, I will take heed of old folk traditions of not walking ‘highways of the dead’ at night. This is not a leisure thrill I will be seeking.

My feet stop at the church. The walls of the graveyard and the iron, cross-clad gate look youthful. There is no covered lich gate, nor place to rest a coffin, and I wonder if these graveyard perimeter features are Victorian or Edwardian replacements of earlier dilapidated predecessors.

5: Burial Rights, Burial Rites, Burial Sites

In Saxon England, Christianity replaced pagan beliefs during what is known as the ‘transition period’. In the early Christian years, burials were often associated with the burial sites of prehistoric people – barrows and cairns etc. This transitioned to burial in consecrated church ground but, as they proliferated, power-plays between churches about burial ensued. Expressing a different perpective on the requirement for church ways to that which we encoutered above from Zadoro-Rio (2003), Devereux says:

‘In the tenth century burial rights became an issue with the beginning of the great expansion of church building, which inevitably encroached on the territories of existing churches or minsters. There was a demand for autonomy from outlying settlements that minster officials felt could erode their authority, not to mention their revenue, so they decided to institute corpse ways that led from outlying locations to the mother church at the heart of the parish, the one that alone held the burial rights. ‘

Devereux (2003)

Although the church dictated where people were buried, they seem to have been less interested, at least initially, in prescribing the form of burial (Hadley and Buckberry, 2005). Wooden and stone markers are sometimes preserved, and it is thought that as the Saxon period closed out, Christian burial rites and markers became more elaborate and diverse (Hadley and Buckberry, 2005).

At the graveyard prayers would have been said. Prayer cycles are found in Medieval manuscripts including the ‘Office of the Dead’, which was recited to ensure ‘repose for the deceased and shorten their time in purgatory‘ (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015). How elaborates and showy funerals were would depend on wealth. Presumably most of the inhabitants from the moor would have been at the poorest end of the scale. Their funerals would have been basic as they would not be able to pay the church for lengthy prayers for the dead soul. Rich individuals would pay for plenty of prayers and masses, and even went as far as paying for ‘the official “poor” of the town, such as cripples, starving widows, orphans, the blind, and the like‘ to act as professional mourners (Johnston, 2013).

Medieval writing charts a growth in the concept of sin and how this attaches itself to death (just as it is also attached to baptism and the washing away of original sin). In the Middle Ages graves and the act of burial therefore increasingly morph into sites of confession and repentance in order to save the dead soul (Mui, 2015).

Killing time before I am picked up I take a circuit of the cemetery. The graveyard is standard for a village church in size and the age of the memorials. Not for the first time in wandering around graves I contemplate the disparity between the number of memorial stones regimenting the turf, and the vastly greater number of parishioners whose bodies would have been buried at this place. For Lydford, a substantial place in the past, with a big parish and well over 1000 years of history, this would be a lot of corpses. Although not marked by grave memorials this ground is buoyed by their bones and belongings. It seems fitting that I reflect on them below my feet, after walking a 'Way' that at least a few of them would have taken along in their death.

6: Burial Goods

Whilst Christain markers and ceremonial rites became more elaborate as the medieval progressed, grave goods diminished greatly; but offerings did not stop altogether. Amulets – an object to offer protection – could sometimes still be deposited with bodies. Some of these had text written on them in the form of charms. Written amulets might have been made on parchment, lead, tin, parts of the body or edible items such as communion wafers. These were invariably folded, as if the act of concealment was important to preserving their power (Gilchrit, 2008). The name of Christ himself was used on amulets to protect against demons and ghosts.

Beads, coins and spindle whorls are common forms of grave good. Spindles had a particular symbolic value, being associated with the weaving of people’s destiny, often in conjunction with the recitation of charms and spells. Coins, have frequently been found bent, and placed near the eyes and in the mouth. The act of coin bending, Gilchrist (2008) writes, may have been integral to the magic rite, and possibly served a similar purpose to the folding of written charms; to protect its potency. Antique objects were offered into graves such as Roman coins and early medieval artifacts and it is speculated that, as well as venerating them, people viewed these ancient objects as being permeated with occult power. Medical items were sometimes deposited, such as hernia trusses, ointments and amulets aimed at healing. These types of grave good link to the belief that the corpse needed to be healed in death to withstand the trials of purgatory.

One of the more common grave goods was a small wand or longer rod (like a walking staff), typically of coppiced hazel, ash or willow. These woods represented, through their fast-growing properties, resurrection and eternal life, and as such rods were one of the pagan items that became easily and acceptably Christianised. In pagan times rods had been used to perform magic rites and summon spirits but they were also used to aid walking and so they have associations with journeys; perhaps a punishing one in the purgatory of the afterlife?

Natural objects like plants and stones, as opposed to manufactured ones, could be placed alongside bodies. Some were given mossy pillows or head rests of rushes (Gilchrist, 2008). Hearth ash containing grains was one of the more common deposits used to line graves. This might have been done to stop the spirit trying to return home to seek its warmth and security. Ash burials go back into prehistory and they seem to be a practice that was hard to stamp out, as testified by various church writings including the 8th C confessional of Egbert which requires a fasting penance for ‘Anyone who burns corn in the place where a dead man lay, for the health of living men and his house‘ (ibid). Stones throughout human history have been suffused with properties and potency. In the context of death, white stones and quartz were sometimes placed in burials. This practice is also known throughout prehistory and is another custom that became Christianized, these stones taking on the symbolism of purity and salvation.

What grave goods were deposited with Lydford corpses? What vestiges of these charming objects remain in the ground? If we could unearth them, what spiritual story would they narrate about the death beliefs of the Lydford parishioners through Medieval time? The acid ground of Lydford makes for poor preservation and so, even if the ground could be dug, it may be unlikely to disclose the physical remnants of its spiritual past.

I stand by the church gate and take a sandwich from my rucksack. Twelve miles is hungry work. I nibble and watch the people pottering around church and castle. Some will have walked through the gorge in the morning, lunched, and finished their day in the village. I stare back down the line of the road and anticipate my mum's arrival to come and get me.

7: Turning and Watching

Magical communication with the dead is not unheard of in our present, but it is a bit niche; the realm of modern witches, druids and excorcists. For the medieval people of Lydford parish, necromantic practices were part and parcel of their lives. There was, throughout Britain, a tradition in which the ghost-seer would hold a vigil between the hour before and the hour after midnight, either at the church porch, the lich-gate, or a nearby lane (Devereux, 2010). Folk tales hint that these ‘Seers’ may have used fasting to assist their hallucinations (Devereux, 2003). Sitting out occurred on specific days such as St Mark’s Eve (24th April), All Hallow’s Eve, Midsummer Eve, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. The Seer or Curch-Watcher would look for wraiths in flight or procession along the road, heading for the church – visions of those who would die in the following twelve months in a premonition or pre-enactment of their death journey. Seers were not just confined to the graveyard but were also known to conduct their divination at stiles and crossroads and other obstacles, where passing ghosts could be interrogated.

‘Behind all these fragments the outlines of a coherent body of spirit lore can be discerned, a corpus of spirit beliefs that persisted in the ‘virtual’ spirit paths traversing the folk mindscapes of old Europe and which became attached to the actual, physical corpse roads, even if in a disjointed manner. Though corpse roads are in themselves medieval or early modern features, the spirit lore that became attached to them probably had its roots in ancient shamanic traditions, for contact with the ancestral spirits and spirit flight are quintessential shamanic themes.’

Devereux, 2010

Conclusion

Now that the bodies are in the ground, I can reflect back on my cadaverous quest to learn more about this Lich Way. I have learnt about transitions from pagan, to loosely Catholic, to controlling Christian practices, and how they impacted on the requirements and rituals of death and dying. Hand in hand with is, I have discovered how necromantic ideas and magic may have informed Medieval notions about the dead and spirits; how these were not entirely lost in a Christian world, but often became incorporated and appropriated to new belief systems. My footsteps took me, not just along a Lich Way, but also through a landscape of more ancient burial and memorial, blurring its distinction with the dead over millennia.

Unearthing the history, through the writing of others, has shown me that, the Lich Way is evasive. Through space its precise route is not known. Scattered dwellings made for ragged starting points rather than ‘a’ beginning and bad weather necessitated various decisions about safe but longer routes to go. More intriguingly, and in the literature, less frequently discussed, its temporal beginning and end are equally ambiguous. When the route became mandated by the church is lost in time, probably somewhere between the 10^th and as late as the 13^th C. However, even the seemingly definitive end point – that lovely precise date of 1260 AD in the dispensation of Bishop Bronescombe to use Widecombe instead – is not the end. If we remember back to the first blog, this decree only applied to the ancient tenements and appears not to have been granted to some of the later Medieval settlements in the central moor. Where this route begins and ends, in both space and time is, and will remain, both hazy and knotty. When coupled with the various other purposes for travelling to Lydford, not just burying bodies, it makes me wonder if, in the case of this route to Lydford, there is anything that we can really call a Lich Way.

References

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

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

Countryfile (2020). Guide to Britain’s corpse roads: history and the best coffin roads to visit. https://www.countryfile.com/go-outdoors/historic-places/guide-to-britains-corpse-roads-history-and-the-best-coffin-roads-to-visit/

Crossing, W. (1912). Guide to Dartmoor: A Topographical Description of the Forest and Commons, Second Edition. Reprinted in 1990 as Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor. Peninsula Press: Newton Abbot.

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

Devereux, P. (2010). Talking and Walking with Spirits: Fresh Perspectives on a Medieval Necromantic System. In Curry, P. (Ed.) Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium. Ashgate: Farnham.

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

Dunn, S. (2020). Folklore in the Landscape: the Case of Corpse Paths. Time and Mind, 13(3), pp245-265.

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

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

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

Historic Environment Record (undated)^a. Site of a Chapel at Wilsworthy, Peter Tavy. MDV3232 https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV3232&resourceID=104

Historic Environment Record (undated)^b. Manor House in the Parish of Peter Tavy. MDV15957. https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MDV15957&resourceID=104

J. Paul Getty Museum (2015) Presentation to complement “Heaven, Hell, and Dying Well: Images of Death in the Middle Ages,” an exhibition organized by the Manuscripts Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (May 29–August 12, 2012). https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/heaven-hell-and-dying-well-the-j-paul-getty-museum/fQKyx2AyMyQUIw?hl=en

Johnston, R. (2013). Typical funerals in medieval England. All Things Medieval.

Mui, S. (2015). Life After Death: shrouded burials in later Anglo Saxon England. Archaeological Review from Cambridge. 30(1), pp150-156.

Turner, S. (2006). Making a Christian Landscape: The countryside in early medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex. University of Exeter Press: Exeter.

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.