Industrial archaeology of Dartmoor
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The
industrial archaeology Industrial archaeology (IA) is the systematic study of material evidence associated with the industrial past. This evidence, collectively referred to as industrial heritage, includes buildings, machinery, artifacts, sites, infrastructure, docu ...
of
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 ...
covers a number of the industries which have, over the ages, taken place on Dartmoor, and the remaining evidence surrounding them. Currently only three industries are economically significant, yet all three will inevitably leave their own traces on the moor: china clay mining, farming and tourism. A good general guide to the commercial activities on Dartmoor at the end of the 19th century is
William Crossing William Crossing (1847–1928) was a writer and chronicler of Dartmoor and the lives of its inhabitants. He lived successively at South Brent, Brentor and at Mary Tavy but died at Plymouth, Devon. Early life Crossing was born in Plymouth on 14 N ...
's ''The Dartmoor Worker''.


Mining

In former times, lead, silver, tin and copper were mined extensively on Dartmoor. The most obvious evidence of mining to the casual visitor to Dartmoor are the remains of the old engine-house at Wheal Betsy which is alongside the
A386 road The A386 is a primary route in Devon, England. It runs from Plymouth on the south coast to Appledore on the north coast. The road starts in the centre of Plymouth, and forms Tavistock Road, the main route out of the city to the north. It cross ...
between
Tavistock Tavistock ( ) is an ancient stannary and market town within West Devon, England. It is situated on the River Tavy from which its name derives. At the 2011 census the three electoral wards (North, South and South West) had a population of 13,028 ...
and
Okehampton Okehampton ( ) is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in West Devon in the English county of Devon. It is situated at the northern edge of Dartmoor, and had a population of 5,922 at the 2011 census. Two electoral wards are based i ...
. The word ''Wheal'' has a particular meaning in
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 ...
and
Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
being either a
tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
or a
copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
mine, however in the case of Wheal Betsy it was principally lead and silver which were mined. Once widely practised by many miners across the moor, by the early 1900s only a few tinners remained, and mining had almost completely ceased twenty years later. Some of the more significant mines were Eylesbarrow, Knock Mine, Vitifer Mine and Hexworthy Mine. The last active mine in the Dartmoor area was Great Rock Mine, which shut down in 1969.


Quarrying

Dartmoor granite has been used in many Devon and Cornish buildings. The prison at
Princetown Princetown is a villageDespite its name, Princetown is not classed as a town today – it is not included in the County Council's list of the 29 towns in Devon: located within Dartmoor national park in the English county of Devon. It is the p ...
was built from granite taken from Walkhampton Common. When the horse tramroad from
Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...
to
Princetown Princetown is a villageDespite its name, Princetown is not classed as a town today – it is not included in the County Council's list of the 29 towns in Devon: located within Dartmoor national park in the English county of Devon. It is the p ...
was completed in 1823, large quantities of granite were more easily transported. There were three major granite quarries on the moor: Haytor, Foggintor and Merrivale. The granite quarries around
Haytor Haytor, also known as Haytor Rocks, Hay Tor, or occasionally Hey Tor, is a granite tor on the eastern edge of Dartmoor in the English county of Devon. Location The tor is at grid reference , near the village of Haytor Vale in the parish of Ils ...
were the source of the stone used in several famous structures, including the New London Bridge, completed in 1831. This granite was transported from the moor via the
Haytor Granite Tramway The Haytor Granite Tramway (also called Heytor) was a tramway built to convey granite from Haytor Down, Dartmoor, Devon to the Stover Canal. It was very unusual in that the track was formed of granite sections, shaped to guide the wheels of wagon ...
, stretches of which are still visible. The extensive quarries at Foggintor provided granite for the construction of London's
Nelson's Column Nelson's Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, Central London, built to commemorate Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson's decisive victory at the Battle of Trafalgar over the combined French and Spanish navies, during whic ...
in the early 1840s, and
New Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...
was faced with granite from the quarry at Merrivale. Merrivale Quarry continued excavating and working its own granite until the 1970s, producing gravestones and agricultural rollers. Work at Merrivale continued until the 1990s, for the last 20 years imported stone such as
gabbro Gabbro () is a phaneritic (coarse-grained), mafic intrusive igneous rock formed from the slow cooling of magnesium-rich and iron-rich magma into a holocrystalline mass deep beneath the Earth's surface. Slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro is che ...
from Norway and Italian marble was dressed and polished. The unusual pink granite at Great Trowlesworthy Tor was also quarried, and there were many other small granite quarries dotted around the moor. Various metamorphic rocks were also quarried in the
metamorphic aureole Metamorphism is the transformation of existing rock (the protolith) to rock with a different mineral composition or texture. Metamorphism takes place at temperatures in excess of , and often also at elevated pressure or in the presence of chem ...
around the edge of the moor, most notably at Meldon.


Gunpowder factory

In 1844 a factory for making gunpowder was built on the open moor, not far from
Postbridge Postbridge is a hamlet in the heart of Dartmoor in the English county of Devon. It lies on the B3212, roughly midway between Princetown and Moretonhampstead. Postbridge is next to the East Dart river, one of two main tributaries of the River ...
. Gunpowder was needed for the tin mines and granite quarries then in operation on the moor. The buildings were widely spaced from one another for safety and the mechanical power for grinding ("incorporating") the powder was derived from waterwheels driven by a
leat A leat (; also lete or leet, or millstream) is the name, common in the south and west of England and in Wales, for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct dug into the ground, especially one supplying water to a watermill or its mill pond. Other ...
. Now known as "Powdermills" or "Powder Mills", there are extensive remains of this factory still visible. Two chimneys still stand and the walls of the two sturdily-built incorporating mills with central waterwheels survive well: they were built with substantial walls but flimsy roofs so that in the event of an explosion, the force of the blast would be directed safely upwards. The ruins of a number of ancillary buildings also survive. A proving mortar—a type of small cannon used to gauge the strength of the gunpowder—used by the factory still lies by the side of the road to the nearby pottery.


Peat-cutting

Peat-cutting for fuel occurred at some locations on Dartmoor until certainly the 1970s, usually for personal use. The right of Dartmoor commoners to cut peat for fuel is known as ''turbary''. These rights were conferred a long time ago, pre-dating most written records. The area once known as the ''Turbary of Alberysheved'' between the
River Teign The River Teign is a river in the county of Devon, England. It is long and rises on Dartmoor, becomes an estuary just below Newton Abbot and reaches the English Channel at Teignmouth. Toponymy The river-name 'Teign' is first attested in an An ...
and the headwaters of the
River Bovey The River Bovey rises on the eastern side of Dartmoor in Devon, England, and is the largest tributary to the River Teign. The river has two main source streams, both rising within a mile of each other, either side of the B3212 road between Moret ...
is mentioned in the Perambulation of the
Forest of Dartmoor The Forest of Dartmoor is an ancient royal forest covering part of Dartmoor, Devon, England. A royal forest was an area reserved by the king for hunting, and William the Conqueror introduced the concept of forest law in England in the 11th ce ...
of 1240 (by 1609 the name of the area had changed to Turf Hill). An attempt was made to commercialise the cutting of peat in 1901 at Rattle Brook Head, however this quickly failed.


Warrens

From at least the 13th century until early in the 20th, rabbits were kept on a commercial scale, both for their flesh and their fur. Documentary evidence for this exists in place names such as Trowlesworthy Warren (mentioned in a document dated 1272) and
Warren House Inn The Warren House Inn is a remote and isolated public house in the heart of Dartmoor, Devon, England. It is the highest pub in southern England at 1,425 feet (434 m) above sea level. It is located on an ancient road across the moor, abou ...
. The physical evidence, in the form of
pillow mounds A warren is a network of wild rodent or lagomorph, typically rabbit burrows. Domestic warrens are artificial, enclosed establishment of animal husbandry dedicated to the raising of European Rabbit, rabbits for meat and fur. The term evolved from t ...
is also plentiful, for example there are 50 pillow mounds at Legis Tor Warren.Mercer 2009, pp.296–298 The sophistication of the warreners is shown by the existence of vermin traps that were placed near the warrens to capture weasels and stoats attempting to get at the rabbits. The significance of the term ''
warren A warren is a network of wild rodent or lagomorph, typically rabbit burrows. Domestic warrens are artificial, enclosed establishment of animal husbandry dedicated to the raising of rabbits for meat and fur. The term evolved from the medieval Angl ...
'' nowadays is not what it once was. In the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
it was a privileged place, and the creatures of the warren were protected by the king 'for his princely delight and pleasure'. The subject of warrening on Dartmoor was addressed in
Eden Phillpotts Eden Phillpotts (4 November 1862 – 29 December 1960) was an English author, poet and dramatist. He was born in Mount Abu, India, was educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for ten years before studying for the stage a ...
' story ''The River''.


Farming

Farming has been practised on Dartmoor since time immemorial. The
dry-stone wall Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction me ...
s which separate fields and mark boundaries give an idea of the extent to which the landscape has been shaped by farming. There is little or no arable farming within the moor, mostly being given over to livestock farming on account of the thin and rocky soil. Some Dartmoor farms are remote in the extreme.


See also

*
Dartmoor tin-mining The tin mining industry on Dartmoor, Devon, England, is thought to have originated in pre-Roman times, and continued right through to the 20th century, when the last commercially worked mine (Golden Dagger Mine) closed in November 1930 (though it ...
*
Warren House Inn The Warren House Inn is a remote and isolated public house in the heart of Dartmoor, Devon, England. It is the highest pub in southern England at 1,425 feet (434 m) above sea level. It is located on an ancient road across the moor, abou ...


References


Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Industrial Archaeology Of Dartmoor Dartmoor
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 ...
History of Devon History of mining in the United Kingdom Mining in Devon