Dartmoor

On his final visit to Britain, Rudolf Steiner’s schedule of lecturing was hectic. He delivered three lectures a day during the Anthroposophical Society’s Summer School at Torquay (11-22 August 1924) - but that is another story. Steiner took one day out of that busy schedule to be a tourist for a day. The decision took him as far west as he ever ventured in his lifetime - to the west cost of Cornwall. Tintagel is the legendary home of King Arthur, Merlin, the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, and the court of Camelot. Ashley dates the Arthurian period as between 400-600 AD but there is no extant documentation to distinguish between myth, legend, and veridical history. Midway through the Torquay Summer School, on Sunday August 17th, Rudolf Steiner declared “I want to go to King Arthur”.  A cavalcade of three cars ventured forth from the southern beachside resort town of Torquay, across the verdant moors of Dartmoor, to the spectacularly positioned Tintagel, on the west coast of Cornwall. The journey took them through the centre of Dartmoor to Tavistock, then across to Boscastle, and down to Tintagel). It is today a drive of 69 miles and of two and a quarter hours.

The famous poet and writer, Sylvia Plath, is sadly perhaps better known for her tragic suicide rather than her genius. My book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2014) looks at Plath’s involvement with the occult and approaches her poems through the lens of mysticism rather than her autobiography. Through this perspective, Plath’s poems yield some surprising –and wildly new interpretations.  Sylvia Plath’s poem, “The Detective,” has never been one of her most famous, in part because of its difficulty. It is generally assumed to be about the collapse of her marriage. Yet viewed through an occult lens, the poem is most clearly a tribute to the Sherlock Holmes stories, and most especially to The Hound of the Baskervilles. In the tale, a hellish hound attacks in the setting of Dartmoor, England, near where Plath and Hughes lived in Devon. The Hound of the Baskervilles has been listed by the BBC as the United Kingdom’s “Best-Loved Novel.”  [See pages 13-15 of attached PDF] Fall 2015 issue of Canadian Holmes magazine

The document was prepared in 1975 as a thesis for RIBA examinations. It describes the construction phase of Dartmoor Prison (1805) and the work of the architect Daniel Asher Alexander (1768 - 1846). The prison design was prepared during a phase of social concern for the conditions prisoners were kept in at the time. It was not designed as a normal prison - rather it was prepared for prisoners of war, firstly French, and then American. Only in the 1840's was it adapted to normal prison use.
As the document was prepared on a typewriter, and before the internet, it was not possible to prepare links to other works.
Most of the drawings were prepared by myself from copies of original elements held in the relevant archives and libraries.

Excavation of a Scheduled burial mound on Whitehorse Hill, Dartmoor revealed an unexpected, intact burial deposit of Early Bronze Age date associated with an unparalleled range of artefacts. The cremated remains of a young person had been placed within a bearskin pelt and provided with a basketry container, from which a braided band with tin studs had spilled out. Within the container were beads of shale, amber, clay and tin; two pairs of turned wooden studs and a worked fl int fl ake. A unique item, possibly a sash or band, made from textile and animal skin was found beneath the container. Beneath this, the basal stone of the cist had been covered by a layer of purple moor grass which had been collected in summer. Analysis of environmental material from the site has revealed important insights into the pyre material used to burn the body, as well as providing important information about the environment in which the cist was constructed. The unparalleled assemblage of organic objects has yielded insights into a range of materials which have not survived from the earlier Bronze Age elsewhere in southern Britain.

The excavation of the Whitehorse Hill cist took place in the late summer of 2011. It had been assumed that the most significant aspect of the project would be the environmental recording and that the cist itself would be empty. In the final event, the cist was found to contain one of the most significant Early Bronze Age burials to have been found in southern Britain.

Introduction Bronze Age field systems have been identified in Dartmoor through the remains of field boundaries. They can be used to explain Bronze Age society alongside other types of evidence. We describe these field systems. We will consider the environment and economy at the time of construction and abandonment. We also consider other Bronze Age archaeology within the local region and other parts of Britain.

This study of Reddaford Farm, Peter Tavy combines new field survey with original historical research. An account of previous work is given. The farm is shown to have a long recorded history, with the first definite mention of a dwelling on the site in 1334 and even earlier documentation of the placename in 1242. Owners and occupiers are traced through the centuries, until abandonment in 1907/8. The Palmer family were the last to occupy the farm. Oral recollection, and photographic and artistic sources, have been used to recreate the final period. A new survey of the field remains of the farm site has been made, and a description is given.

An archaeology survey of the palimpsest around Black Tor in the Meavy Valley on Dartmoor. Among the sites considered are prehistoric enclosures, a lode-back tinwork, granite quarrying and evidence for the use of the area as a military training ground during The Second World War.

This paper brings an anthropological perspective to the archaeology of medieval peasant settlement on Dartmoor. Some studies of medieval settlement have been critiqued for an emphasis on classification over interpretation and detailed description of construction and form at the expense of social context. While descriptive analysis of settlement is important, such studies may obscure the experiences of the real people who inhabited and used these spaces in the past. Using previously published reports of several excavated medieval settlements on Dartmoor, I reconsider the material evidence to populate the household with active, gendered individuals over the course of its lifespan, from construction to excavation. Understanding deserted medieval settlements as the material correlate of active and diverse households embedded within broader social and environmental landscapes helps to move towards an appreciation for the individual histories, practices, and choices that gave each household its own unique character. A historically situated, anthropological approach to medieval Dartmoor settlement shows how dimensions of social difference, both within and between households, were contested, negotiated, and maintained within, on, and through the landscape. By understanding the deserted medieval settlements of Dartmoor as sites of household formation and maintenance over long periods of time, I show how the material evidence of everyday experience brings empirical depth to the connection between individual past lives and the broader social contexts.

Broderick, L.G., 2014. Book Review: Fox, H. 2012. Dartmoor’s Alluring Uplands: Transhumance and Pastoral Management in the Middle Ages. In: Assemblage 13 [Online]. Available from: http://www.assemblage.group.shef.ac.uk/reviews/book-reviews/201-fox-h-2012-dartmoors-alluring-uplands. [Accessed: 05.03.2014]

Dartmoor National park is situated in Devon, UK. It is an area of over 250 sq. miles of open moorland with a sprinkling of small villages, farms and river valleys. The Moor is bisected by two main roads into the Northern and Southern Moors. The Northern Moor is more isolated and austere. Dartmoor is one of the few real wildernesses left in England. Although it is not mountainous, the exposed moorland is primeval, bleak and remarkably free from human interference - although many have tried to tame it. The elements can be strong over Dartmoor, with mist, rain and bitingly cold keen winds being all too common. Dartmoor is a mound of granite which doesn't drain very well. It is a wet place, with blanket bogs on the higher points and boggy mires where drainage is impeded in the valleys. Prehistoric remains abound.

In 2014 Oxford Archaeology (funded by Historic England and mineral company Silbelco), undertook the topographic survey and full excavation of Emmets Post barrow in advance of china clay quarry expansion. This was followed by a programme of post-excavation research funded by Historic England.