Lydford

In Saxon times, there were just four royal boroughs in Devon: Exeter, Barnstaple, Totnes and, astonishingly, Lydford, which is now a pleasant small town still occupying the same strategic position on the River Lyd that made it so important in those days. In the 11th century, the Normans built a fortification here, which was superseded 100 years later by the present Lydford Castle, an austere stone fortress which for generations served the independent tin miners of Dartmoor as both a court and a prison. The justice meted out here was notoriously arbitrary. William Browne of Tavistock (1590-1643) observed:

I oft have heard of Lydford law,
How in the morn they hang and draw
And sit in judgement after. 

Lydford parish is the largest in England, encompassing the whole of the Forest of Dartmoor. For many centuries the dead were brought down from the moor along the ancient Lych Way for burial in St Petroc’s churchyard. A tombstone near the porch bears a lengthy and laboriously humorous epitaph to the local watchmaker, George Routleigh, who died in 1802. The inscription includes the statement that George’s life had been “Wound up in hope of being taken in hand by his Maker and of being thoroughly cleansed and repaired and set going in the world to come”.

To the southwest of the village, the valley of the River Lyd suddenly narrows to form the 1½ mile long Lydford Gorge (National Trust), one of Devon’s most spectacular natural features. Visitors can follow the riverside path to the Devil’s Cauldron, or wander along the two-mile walk to the White Lady, a narrow 100 foot high waterfall. Back in the 17th century, the then remote Lydford Gorge provided a secure refuge for a band of brigands who called themselves the Gubbinses. Their leader was a certain Roger Rowle (dubbed the Robin Hood of the West), whose exploits are recounted in Charles Kingsley’s novel Westward Ho!