Book Description

This book about England's last great wilderness, as it is often called, is a systematic topographical and historical survey of Dartmoor by watersheds, and the first to deal comprehensively with the region since the celebrated guide of 1908 by William Crossing. Every river country has its map showing courses and names of even the smallest tributary streams. Authentic place-names are featured in the book, their origin in usage and tradition being traced back wherever possible. High Dartmoor traces the formation of the great granite upland from its inception as molten magma to the heather-cloaked moorland we know today, on which the first settlers built their homes and monuments nearly four thousand years ago. Something of the mystery, enigma and drama of this vast and remarkable moorland, and certainly its atmosphere, sound an echo in these pages, and the lives of the moormen and their families over several centuries are described in detail. explanation is given of every type of feature described in the text, and the illustrated note on the physical pattern of the valleys, which makes clear that, far from being an expanse of moorland conceived in a haphazard fit by nature, Dartmoor is possessed of a physical symmetry. Never before has the Moor been meticulously recorded in word and picture. High Dartmoor will remain for a long time to come the definitive work on the subject.