Walking on Dartmoor. Earle John
Iron Age men were next to live on Dartmoor as the remains at Kes Tor proved, where a whole community dwelt, with an iron-smelter's house and workshop nearby in its own pound. The date has now come up to the fifth century BC. Then there appears to be a gap in the human occupation of the moor from about 400BC until the coming of the Anglo-Saxons at about 700AD.
It was at this time that the houses changed from the round hut circles of the Bronze Age to rectangular shapes with their surrounding field systems. The remains of these houses are stone-walled but excavation has discovered that very often below the foundation are the post holes of wattle and turf huts from earlier times, the sites having been rebuilt on many times. The medieval village at Houndtor is perhaps the best-known example. By the various dating systems used, it is interesting to find that the early Saxons built in wood though there were large quantities of stone available and there must have been evidence of earlier men building in stone. It was not until about 1200 that stone buildings reappear.
All through the early days of the Saxons and into medieval times Dartmoor was not actually claimed by any group but plenty of people took advantage of the good summer grazing and drove their sheep and cattle onto the moor as the many lanes leading up onto the high land indicate.
It was the Normans who made Dartmoor one of the royal hunting forests and so began the organisation of administration and allocation of land on the moor. The name Dartmoor Forest has persisted from this time and can be misleading. It was a term used for a royal hunting area and did not necessarily mean that the land was covered with forests. It was also about this time that the ancient Dartmoor tenements were founded and the whole conception of ‘commoners’ who had grazing rights on the moorland started.
Tin was mined in Cornwall in the times of the Bronze Age but we first find documentary evidence of alluvial tin in streaming in the year 1156, near Sheepstor and Brisworthy. In that year about 60 tons of smelted tin were produced. Within fifteen years or so the production had risen to over 300 tons a year.
So the early tinners used an opencast mining system working on the broad, shallow, river valleys where the rich tin deposits had been carried by floods and were contained in the sands and gravels. The larger stones containing tin ores were crushed in primitive mills and then washed or streamed with the other tin-bearing sand from the river bed. Smelting took place over a peat fire which produced impure lumps of tin but there were also more refined smelting centres.
By the 13th century blowing houses had been introduced for smelting where charcoal was used as the fuel and the molten metal ran from the furnace into the moulds. The name blowing house comes from the fact that huge bellows were used, powered by water wheels, to help produce the intense heat needed. Quite a few remains of blowing houses can be found on Dartmoor though not many have the moulds and wheel pits to be seen.
Medieval Village, Walk 36
The output decreased over the years and by 1243 only 40 tons were produced, but tin streaming continued until shallow adit mining began in the 15th and 16th centuries and later still this method was changed again to shaft mining in the 18th and 19th centuries.
So all over Dartmoor you have the evidence of the work of the tinners throughout the ages, from the mounds of rubble left behind after the early streaming, great gullies of opencast mining, to the old ruins of the buildings, wheel pits and engine houses of more recent times.
The tinners themselves in medieval times were probably small farmers who tried to add to their meagre living by forming small groups to search for tin. However, during this period the tinners were a powerful and favoured group of workers with a large number of privileges which included exemption from certain taxes and dues, and from serving on juries and with a right to form their own militia. All these privileges seem to stem from the formation of the stannaries which controlled the tin industry and taxed it for the Crown.
Dartmoor itself was a stannary and was almost a self-governing country with its own laws, courts and even a jail. So it was that the tinners had rights, privileges and protection as providers of royal taxes which put them beyond many of the laws of the rest of the land.
Each of the stannary areas has a town where the taxes or coinage were collected and these towns were around the edge of Dartmoor: Tavistock, Chagford, Ashburton and so on. The countryside under the control of these coinage towns covered vast areas even as far as the north coast of Devon but the boundaries all met at Crockern Tor in the middle of the Dartmoor stannary. This led to the Great Court or Parliament of Crockern Tor sitting at this windswept part of the moor, the first recorded meeting of which was in 1494. It was here that the huge task of setting the laws and rules of the tin industry were worked out. The day to day administration was dealt with by courts in the stannary towns where they also heard legal cases to do with the tin industry such as wrangles over ownership of land, bad management, even common assault. As I said, the tinners were a law unto themselves but they dealt impartially with all cases and handed out punishment equally impartially.
The Parliament of Crockern Tor was also aware of its duty to the rest of the country, for in 1532 they discussed the problems caused by vast quantities of sediment and waste, caused by the tinners’ works on Dartmoor, being carried down the rivers Dart and Plym and silting up the harbours at their mouths.
But over the years the importance of the tin taxes for the Crown lessened and the power of the Great Court of Crockern Tor decreased and many of the privileges for the tinners were withdrawn. The last tin coinage was in 1838 and by 1896 the stannary courts were abolished. The tin industry in Devon was dead and so were the powers and privileges of the tinners, men who knew that in the early days they could defy the laws of the land because the king depended on them for a large part of the royal income, but in return created their own laws and rules often more severe than common law.
Farming on Dartmoor is another huge subject that I can only touch on here. Clearly prehistoric man herded his animals on the moor. In the twelfth century the Cistercians from Buckfast Abbey drove their own sheep up onto the moor near the abbey to graze there and indeed travelled across the moor by the Abbots Way (described later) to Tavistock Abbey with their wool.
I mentioned earlier the Ancient Tenements of Dartmoor which came into being with the Normans. It was the increase in population at this time that made more and more people look for farming land on the higher areas of Dartmoor, and this is clearly the start of farming settlements on the moor as we know them now. Most of the land was owned, as a lot of it still is, by the Duchy of Cornwall, and the tenants had to pay their rates to the Duchy and agree to certain feudal duties.
Most farmers looked to increase the acreage of their land on Dartmoor by the system called newtakes, which had been operating since well before the 14th century. The average farm on Dartmoor was about 40 acres. This old system of newtakes allowed the farmers on the ancient tenements to enclose and reclaim eight acres of rough moorland every time a new tenant took over a farm.
The modern Dartmoor farmers of today still have to contend with the harsh conditions faced by the tenants of years ago. Many of the farms are still rented from the Duchy and are occupied by the same family for generations. Cattle, sheep and ponies are still all important; keeping livestock is the way that they make their livings. If the farm has some good enclosed pastures they may keep a herd of Friesians for milk. Lower down, maybe in a sheltered valley, the less harsh climate will allow farmers to grow a few cereals as well as keep dual-purpose cattle, sheep and ponies. A few pigs and chickens, usually managed by the farmer's wife, may all add to the possible income for the typical mixed Dartmoor farm. At the other end of the scale there are a few high moorland farms which might really be called smallholdings which in these hard days are not really economic to run even with the subsidies that are given to hill cattle farmers.
Riders near Great Mis Tor, see Walk 26
Hay, of course, is an important crop for all Dartmoor farmers who have large numbers of animals to feed in winter, but with the high rainfall and uncertain summer sun it is not surprising that many now make silage