THE CAMPS
No camps in the forest--All on the confines--No apprehension
of attack from the south--Whit Tor--The exploration of the
camp--How the walls were constructed--This explains their ruinous
condition--Brent Tor formerly a camp--How a road up it was
made--The Dewerstone camp--Earthen camps--Hembury--The Galford
Down camp--A Saxon thegn's burrh--Old Squire Bidlake--Lydford
fortifications.
As I have already said, the inhabitants of Dartmoor in prehistoric
times seem to have been of a peaceable disposition. There are pounds
to contain cattle and protect them against wolves, but no camps on the
moor itself. What camps there are will be found on its confines, as
though the natives feared attack from an enemy outside, but were not
troubled by their neighbours of the same blood and pursuits.
Of camps there are two sorts, but we cannot be sure that they belong to
different races of men. The stone-walled fortresses are few--Brent Tor,
Whit Tor, Cranbrook, one near Ashburton, and the Dewerstone. Of earth,
or earth and stone mixed, there are more. A small one above Tavistock,
an immense and very important one at Galford or Burleigh in Bridestowe,
one above the station at Okehampton, Wooston and Prestonbury on the
Teign, Holne and Hembury on the Dart. Along the south of the moor
are none till we reach Boringdon, between the Plym and the Tory. But
one only of all these has been systematically explored, and that is,
perhaps, the finest, on Whit Tor, above Mary and Peter Tavy.
Whit Tor rises to the height of 1,526 feet above the sea-level. It is
on Cudlipptown Down, and commands exceedingly fine views westward as
far as the distant Cornish hills.
The tor is not of granite, but of gabbro, an eruptive igneous rock,
very black and hard, and splitting along defined planes under the
action of the weather. The north side near the summit is covered with a
clitter of broken masses.
The boldest masses of rock rise on the south precipitously, but there
are fangs of rock that shoot up over the small plateau that forms the
summit of the hill.
The whole of the summit is surrounded by a double wall in a very
ruinous condition, and this is to a considerable extent due to the
smallness of the stones of which it was composed. The faces of the
walls were to be traced only by digging, and were never more than
doubtful.
Both walls appear to have been 10 feet thick, perhaps a little more;
the outer, when perfect, might have had a height of 4 to 4½ feet,
whilst the inner, judged by the débris, appears to have been 6 to 7
feet high.
The space between the walls varied, owing to the inequalities of the
ground, but was generally 10 feet wide.
The area inclosed by the innermost wall amounts to close on one and a
half acres; the total amount included within the outer wall is about
two and a half acres of ground.
The circumference is very much broken up, as is also the inclosed area,
by considerable masses of protruding rocks. About these, within the
camp, heaps of small stones had been piled up, forming cairns. The
largest and most notable of these is at the south-west, and consists
of a core of rock about which an immense accumulation of stones has
been heaped. All these cairns were thoroughly explored. They covered
no interments, and although they disclosed evidences that fires had
been lighted against the rocks, and that people had camped there for
a while, they showed no tokens of structural erection, as though they
were ruinous huts built against the native rock. The huge cairn was
removed with great labour, and revealed nothing whatever beneath it but
one flint flake.
These cairns, there can be little doubt, were collections of stones for
the use of the besieged, to serve as missiles, or for the repair of the
walls.
Within the area of the camp are a few hut circles. One near the centre
is double, and contained an incredible number of flint chips, a flint
scraper, and a core from which flakes had been struck. The whole area
is littered with flint chips that are brought up by the moles when
making their burrows, and curiously enough not a single arrow-head
or flake that can be confidently set down as a weapon has been
disinterred. The pottery found is all of the hand-made cooking-vessel
type.
To the east is a circle sheltered on one side by a mass of rock, that
has a second chamber, a sort of bedroom made under a slab of rock, with
the interstices on all sides built up, except only on that by which
it was entered from the hut. A good deal of flint was found there.
Outside, on the south, was another hut circle, where a piece of clear
quartz crystal was found, together with a flint knife that had one edge
serrated by use.
[Illustration: COVERED CHAMBER AND COOKING-HOLE.]
Connected with the camp on the north-east is a ruined wall that leads
to an inclosure with numerous hut circles. South-west of the camp
further down the hill is a pound in good preservation with eight hut
circles in it. A reeve or bank to the west of the camp leads down to
other collections of habitations of the same description.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF STONE AND TIMBER WALL.]
Some ten cairns on the slopes have been investigated, but have yielded
little beyond the handful of ashes sunk in a pit in the centre that
represents the dead. A ruined kistvaen, much mutilated, lies between
the camp and the Langstone, a menhir that gives its name to the common,
and which is the starting-point of a stone row of very inconsiderable
blocks that led to a cairn now demolished, and its place occupied by a
pool. From Langstone a track to the south-east leads by the head of the
Peter Tavy stream, which rises in a bog, to a fine circle of standing
stones, and on the slope below that and above the Walkham river is a
large settlement of some thirty or forty habitations. Beyond the Peter
Tavy brook, moreover, are numerous clusters of dwellings. To all the
population who lived in these huts, Whit Tor had served as a camp of
refuge. The place deserves a visit, for we have there collected within
a small radius the houses and hamlets occupied by the primeval race,
the tombs of their dead, the stone row set up in memory of some chief
represented by the Longstone towering above the petty stones below, the
circle in which the dead were burned, and finally, the camp to which
they flew to defend their beloved moor from invasion.
It may cause some surprise that the walls of the stone castles should
be in such complete ruin. But, in all likelihood, they were constructed
on the same principle as the Gaulish camps described by Cæsar. They
were built of timber frames packed in with stones, and the logs
mortised together held the stones in place. When, however, the wood
rotted, this mode of construction ensured and precipitated utter ruin.
At Murcens, in the department of Lot, is one of these stone camps,
and sufficiently well preserved, owing to the size of the limestone
slabs employed in the building, to show precisely how the whole was
constructed. But the walls of Iosolodunum, that held out so bravely
against Cæsar, being built of small stones compacted with timber, are
now but heaps of ruin, no better than those of Whit Tor.
Brent Tor was fortified in a manner very similar to Whit Tor; the outer
wall remains fairly perfect on the north side, but the inner wall has
been much injured. In this instance it is not the summit, but the base
of the hill that has been defended. As there is a church on the summit,
as also a churchyard with its wall, these have drawn their supplies
from the circumvallation. Moreover, it has been broken through to form
a way up to the church.
[Illustration: BRENT TOR]
A late curate of Tavistock, whose function it was to take the service
on Brent Tor, and who found it often desperate work to scramble to the
summit in storm and sleet and rain, resolved on forming a roadway to
the churchyard gate. But he experienced some difficulty in persuading
men to go out from Tavistock to work at this churchway. However, he
supplied himself with several bottles of whisky, and when he saw a
sturdy labourer standing idle in the market-place he invited him into
his lodgings and plied him with hot grog, till the man in a moist and
smiling condition assented to the proposition that he should give a day
to the Brent Tor path. By this means it was made. The curate was wont
to say: "Hannibal cut his way through the Alps with vinegar; I hewed
mine over Brent Tor with prime usquebaugh." Few traces of this way
remain, but in making it sad mischief was made with the inner wall of
the fortress.
On Brent Tor summit it is sometimes impossible to stand against the
wind. I remember how that on one occasion a baptismal party mounted
it in driving rain. The father carried the child, and he wore for
the occasion a new blue jersey. When the poor babe was presented at
the font it was not only streaming with water, but its sopped white
garments had become blue with the stain from the father's jersey.
On an occasion of a funeral, when the parson emerged from the church
door he was all but prostrated by the north-west blast, and he and the
funeral party had to proceed to the grave much like frogs. "Crook'y
down, sir!" was the sexton's advice; and the whole company had to press
forward bent double, and to finish the service seated in the "lew" of
headstones.
According to popular belief the graves, which are cut in the volcanic
tufa, fill with water, and the dead dissolve into a sort of soup.
But this is not true; the rock is dry and porous. It discharges its
drainage by a little spring on the north-east that in process of ages
has worked itself from stage to stage lower down the hill.
The Dewerstone Camp consists of two stone walls drawn across the
headland. No walls were needed for the sides that were precipitous.
Cranbrook Castle is in very good preservation, except on the side
towards the Teign, where it has been removed by road-menders, but
not within recent years. It richly deserves to be investigated, and
the owners have recently granted permission to do so to the Dartmoor
Exploration Committee.
We come next to the earthen-banked camps. Of these there is a very fine
example at Hembury, near Buckfastleigh. But the finest of all is in
Burleigh Wood, in the parish of Bridestowe. Here the side accessible
from Galford Down has been cut through, with a trench and a bank thrown
up on the camp side, and this is carried right across the neck. The
earthen banks were almost certainly crested with palisades. Hard by
this early camp, where a bronze palstave has been found, is another of
a different character, occupying the extreme point of the hill. This
consists of a tump or mound, with an earthwork round it as a ring. In
this are remains of iron-smelting.
There can be little doubt as to the period of this latter. It was
the _burrh_ of the Anglo-Saxon, and was in every point similar to
the _mottes_ of the Merovingians in France. On the Bayeux tapestry
three fortified places are represented--Dinan, Dol, and Rennes--and
all are of the same type. A mound of earth was either thrown up, or a
hilltop was artificially shaped like a tumulus. On the top of this the
_thegn_ erected his fortress of wood. In the Bayeux representations the
superstructures at Dol and Rennes are of timber, and that of Dinan is
partly of timber and partly of stone. A flying bridge of wood led from
the gate in the palisading of the outer ring, supported on posts, and
conducted by an incline to the gate of the citadel. An example of one
of these camps at Bishopston in Gower has been explored recently.[11]
The stumps of the pales were there found embedded in the clay of the
bank, in tolerable preservation.
In the valley below Burleigh Camp, commanding the ancient road from
Exeter by Okehampton to Launceston, was a third camp, that has been for
the most part obliterated; it occupied a rising knoll of limestone, and
this latter has been quarried, so that the camp earthworks have been
either destroyed or buried under the accumulations from the quarry.
The locality is of great interest. The ridge goes by the name of
Galford, and there is reason to think that this was the Gavulford of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where, in 823, the Britons made their last
stand against Egbert and the Saxons of Devon.
The place is by nature very strong, and it dominates two roads, that
from Exeter to Cornwall, and that which branched off from it on
Sourton Down and struck through Sourton to Lydford. The name Gavulford
signifies the holdfast on the _fordd_ or road.
Burleigh Camp is on the estate of Bidlake, an interesting old manor
house, long the residence of a family of the same name, and deserving a
visit. Old Squire Bidlake was a zealous Royalist, and the Parliamentary
soldiers went to his house to seize him. As they entered the avenue
they met an elderly tramp in rags, and said, "You fellow. Have you seen
Squire Bidlake?"
"Yes," he replied; "I've just come from the house, and when I was there
he was in it."
Then he went his way, and not till too late did they discover that this
tramp was Squire Bidlake himself slipping away in disguise.
He fled to Burleigh Wood. There is a little farm below it, in which,
at the time, lived a tenant of the name of Veale. Veale and his wife
and daughter concealed him in the underwood, and daily conveyed to him
food, and supplied him with blankets till the search for him ceased.
At the Restoration, Squire Bidlake made over the farm to the Veales on
a nominal rent, to be held by them on this rent so long as a male Veale
of their descent remained to hold it.
Both Bidlakes and Veales are now gone, and the little farmhouse is a
ruin. Squire Bidlake is supposed still to haunt the wood, and children
are frightened by their mothers with the threat that the old squire
will come and fetch them, if naughty.
Lydford was strongly defended. It occupies a fringe of land between
ravines, and lines of fortification were drawn across the neck. These
may still be traced. The castle stands on a tump artificially shaped.
Beyond the church is another small camp, probably British. The castle
itself is a structure of stone, replacing the old Saxon _burrh_.
It was probably from the bridges leading up into these citadels, which
the Norsemen saw when they harried our coasts, that they conceived
the idea that the rainbow was the great bridge leading up into Odin's
Valhalla.
"What fools the gods must be," says the inquirer in the Edda, "to build
their passage of egress and ingress of such brittle stuff."
FOOTNOTES:
[11] _Archæologia Cambrensis_, July, 1899. The camp was excavated by
Colonel W. L. Morgan.