Buckland in the Moor is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...
in the
Teignbridge
Teignbridge is a local government district in Devon, England. Its council is based in Newton Abbot.
Other towns in the district include Ashburton, Buckfastleigh, Dawlish and Teignmouth. It is named for the old Teignbridge hundred.
The ...
district of
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
, England.
According to the 2001 census it had a population of 94. The village is in
Dartmoor
Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, England. The moorland and surrounding land has been protected by National Park status since 1951. Dartmoor National Park covers .
The granite which forms the uplands dates from the Carboniferous ...
.
According to
Elias Tozer (1825–1873) a ritual until recently had been observed in the village of Buckland-in-the-Moor on Midsummer Day in which the youth of the village would sacrifice a sheep on the block of granite and sprinkle themselves with the blood. He could not find what the significance of the ritual was, but says it was thought to have pre-Christian Celtic origins.
The church is made of stone quarried on the moor. The face of the clock spells out "My Dear Mother". The baptismal font is Norman, and decorated with leaves and stars.
Nearby there is a viewpoint called Buckland Beacon where may also be found the 10 Commandment Stones (1282 ft).
In 1927 the Lord of Buckland Manor, Mr Whitley, learnt that parliament had rejected a proposed revision of the
Book of Common Prayer
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...
using
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
' Two Commandments instead of Moses' Ten, at Holy Communion.
He celebrated by engaging Mr W A Clements, a stonemason from Exeter, to engrave granite stones in situ on Buckland Beacon with the Ten Commandments. He started work on 15 December 1927 and completed the job on 14 June 1928. Whilst engraving the stones he lived in a cow shed on the site and was supplied each week with a loaf of bread by Mr Whitley.
In later years Mr Clements said, "Day after day I was on my knees chipping away and I wondered if the originator of the Commandments suffered from an aching back and sore knees as I did". A glance at the stones reveals eleven commandments, the eleventh inscribed, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. John 13 v34."
References
External links
Villages in Devon
{{Devon-geo-stub