Bovey Tracey and Lustleigh

A ride through Bovey Tracey and Lustleigh brings together two very different parts of Dartmoor’s history. Bovey Tracey developed as a small market and industrial town on the eastern edge of the moor, while Lustleigh preserves something much older and more intimate: a church site with roots reaching back into the centuries after Roman Britain, surrounded by cottages and lanes which still retain much of the character of an old Dartmoor village.

At Bovey Tracey, the principal historical stop is Cromwell’s Arch, a surviving fragment associated with the town’s medieval religious past. Standing somewhat incongruously amid the later town, it is a reminder that Bovey Tracey has changed repeatedly over the centuries. What appears today as a small Dartmoor town has accumulated layers of religious, commercial and industrial history which are not immediately obvious when simply riding through it.

Read the Bovey Tracey article →

[Cromwell’s Arch and Bovey Tracey] (LINK)

A few miles away, Lustleigh presents a very different picture. The village is centred on St John the Baptist Church, but the history of the site goes back much further than the surviving medieval building. Inside the church is the Datuidoc Stone, generally dated to about AD 550–600. Its inscription commemorates Datuidoc, son of Conhinoc, and provides a physical link with a community living here some fourteen centuries ago.

The stone is especially evocative because it belongs to a period about which relatively little survives locally. The people who knew Datuidoc inhabited a post-Roman South West in which Brittonic speech, Christianity, older traditions and the remains of Roman influence overlapped. The stone eventually became part of the later church itself, at one stage being used as a doorsill before being moved inside for protection.

Read the Lustleigh church articles →

[St John the Baptist Church, Lustleigh] (LINK) · [The Datuidoc Stone and Early Lustleigh] (LINK)

Beyond the church, the old cottages around Lustleigh and Wreyland preserve another layer of the village’s history. Granite, cob, thatch, narrow lanes and buildings accumulated over several centuries give some idea of how the settlement developed around its church and surrounding farmland. These are not museum pieces arranged to recreate an old village. They remain part of a living settlement, which is one reason Lustleigh retains such a strong sense of continuity.

Read the Lustleigh village article →

[The Old Cottages of Lustleigh and Wreyland] (LINK)

Taken together, the three principal stops trace a surprisingly long span of local history: Cromwell’s Arch at Bovey Tracey, the medieval church and much older Datuidoc Stone at Lustleigh, and the surviving cottages of the village itself. The route passes through an attractive part of eastern Dartmoor, but the landscape becomes more interesting once these scattered survivals are recognised as fragments of the communities that occupied it over many centuries.