The Watching Place

This is Beetor Cross on Dartmoor. It's on the B3212 that crosses the moor from Moretonhampstead to Yelverton. 

It's also known as The Watching Place, and there are several stories in circulation as to why this might be the case. 

The first is that it was the haunt of a highwayman called John Fall, whose speciality was leaping out at his victims and taking them by surprise.


Then there's the theory that it marked the point beyond which French and American officers on parole from Dartmoor prison during the Napoleonic wars and living in Moretonhampstead were not permitted to proceed. 

Or that in mediaeval times it was the site of the gallows, where relatives or friends of the condemned person would watch and wait for permission from the Lord of the Manor to cut down the corpse.

My favourite story is that the name dates back to an outbreak of plague in 1626, which was spread by soldiers and sailors travelling between Barnstaple and Plymouth via the Mariner's Way. Some of the inhabitants of a settlement called Puddaven, near Beetor Cross, were afflicted, and as they were no longer able to care for themselves, every evening neighbours placed provisions for them on a flattish stone at some distance from the house. They would then retreat to wait and watch. If the food was removed, fresh supplies would be left the following day. On the fifth day no one came and the food stayed where it was, so the neighbours understood that the last survivor had died. So, having approached the house, with no response to their shouts, the neighbours set fire to the thatch and burnt it down in the hope that this would stop the plague spreading further. From this time, it is said, the area became known as the Watching Place.

Something about this old story, the solidarity shown by neighbours during a time of great fear and uncertainty, lifted it above its rivals and prompted me to start writing a story of my own. As part of my research, I read all the folklore I could connected with the moor, and found several other stories associated with outbreaks of plague.

Notably, there was the story told about Merrivale by the celebrated chronicler of Dartmoor, William Crossing, who recalls that the area of Bronze Age relics on Longash Common was once known as Plague Market, the tradition being that during outbreaks of plague at Tavistock,

food would be left there by moor folk for townspeople to collect. 

And another that attaches itself to sites all over the country, but on Dartmoor to the ruins below Hound Tor: that the mediaeval village was abandoned during the Black Death.   

I visited and was moved not just by the deaths of the villagers but by the detail of their lives also, such as the fact they built their houses into the side of a hill, with livestock housed in the shippon at the lower end, and a gully cut to drain the slurry  ... 

... and the step leading up into the cramped communal sleeping chamber.  

And I read and wrote, and wrote and read, and after seven years there was a coming-of-age novel ... 

... and after a few more years, during which it sat on my laptop while I wrote poetry, and won a prize to have a collection published, it finally emerged into a largely oblivious world under my publishers' Tamar Books imprint.

I picked up a copy the other day and read the back. Swine flu ... avian flu ... SARS ... We are frequently warned of imminent, drug-resistant pandemics. But what is it really like to wait for the end of the world?

I flicked through. Social distancing. Self-isolation. It's all in there, centuries before these practices were formally identified and their names coined.  

There's even a scene involving frenetic hand washing, though no emphasis on that as a way of avoiding infection, because my characters, stuck in 1349, wouldn't have known that. And besides it's fleas they should mostly have been avoiding. 

Every day on Twitter there are countless stories of selflessness, bravery and idiocy surrounding Covid-19, and I'm reminded again and again that while pandemics come and go, and technology and medical treatments improve, people are essentially the same as they've always been. We're all in the Watching Place now, and I feel a renewed closeness to characters that were such a big part of my life for so long.




Illustrations by Dru Marland

A Pilgrimage to St Cynog's Walking Yew

We'd just settled in and it was time to go home ... 

Feckin' monkeys!

... but having taken four hours to drive the 110 miles to our base in Pembrokeshire the previous Saturday - and with the final of the Champions League being held in Cardiff that evening - we decided to avoid the traffic and take the scenic route back. 

First stop Narberth, for some (veggie) treats.

Then a 60 mile drive around the top of the western Brecon Beacons.

Just under three years ago, I came across an article about a yew in the churchyard of St Cynog's in Defynnog, Powys. It had just been estimated to be 5,600 years old, and thus the oldest tree in Europe. 

I wanted to go and see it. I had to go and see it! And so did my friend, Cheryl. We started to make plans. 

And then Cheryl died. 

So when I saw that our detour home would take us through nearby Sennybridge, I had to go there for her, as well as for myself. 

The tree is so old it has split into two halves, one 40 feet wide, the other 20. For a long time it was thought to be two trees, but tree DNA says otherwise.

In a pamphlet in the church, yew tree historian Allen Meredith writes that 'walking trees' occur as part of a natural layering process, or can sometimes be due to lightning strike or other natural phenomena. Thus part of the tree can appear to move away from its original site. 

Both parts of the tree can continue to produce new growth to cover the old and decayed wood, and eventually it will appear as two individual trees. 

The researchers obtained several samples of old wood from the larger trunk, where over 120 rings were found in one and a half inches, making the Defynnog yew a very ancient tree - a sapling in the early Bronze Age. 

It was the perfect place to contemplate life and death and regeneration.  

I get the feeling that this tree, like the other remarkable trees I've met, is quite aware of how special it is. 

And like those two ancient Somerset oaks, Gog and Magog, lots of people have visited it, bearing gifts. I wrote a tiny plea, rolled it up and eased it into a crack in the bark. And thought about the quietly continuing presence that is Cheryl. 

St Cynog, son of Brychan, was an early British saint and martyr, and the yew is not the only ancient thing associated with his church here. 

This is a Romano-Celtic gravestone with the Latin inscription RUGNIATIO LIVENDONI, meaning [the stone] of Rugniatis, son of Vendonius. It's believed to date from the fifth century, and was discovered in 1853, built into the external face of the church tower.

On the left hand side are vestiges of Ogham script which are no longer legible, thanks to the mediaeval masons who fitted it into the tower ...

... and at the top, Celtic inscriptions from the ninth to 11th centuries.    

Also very very old indeed is this stone holy water stoup, believed to be pre-Norman ... 

... and the font, the Runic and Lombardic inscriptions of which makes it unique in Wales. 
The base is also a font which has been upturned. 

On the rim is carved SIWURD and GWLMER, which apparently indicates a Viking settlement in the early 11th century. 

This interested me on account of Sywardes Cross (aka Nun's Cross) on Dartmoor, which features large in my novel, 'Dart'.  

However, Syward/Siward of the Cross has been tentatively identified as the 11th century Earl Siward of Northumbria. This Siwurd could be Richard Siward, Lord of Talyfan, who lived two centuries later. 

It was time to be going, however. 

One last look at the churchyard, bright with fox and cubs ... 

... and we headed home at the end of our West Wales adventure. 

The Black Death : A Trailer!

This is so good, I'm going to think of it as a trailer for my historical novel, Dart, which is set on Dartmoor in 1348, the year the Black Death came to our islands ... 

Dart All Over The World

For me, the most important thing about writing - whether poetry or prose - is making connections.  One of the greatest thrills for me as a reader is to recognise in the work of someone else an aspect of behaviour, a trait or a feeling that is part of me or my experience, especially if it is revelatory.  I like to think that what I write might also ring true with some of the people who take the trouble to read it. 

I recently had my attention drawn to a review of my novel, Dart, on the blog of Lawrence Burton, a writer who residing in San Antonio, Texas.  He describes the roundabout way in which he encountered me and my work, and what he thinks of my novel.  What is striking to me is that although he is, admittedly, English,  my story set 666 years ago on the weather-battered upland of Dartmoor struck a chord with someone living in a very different time, climate and culture.  Here's a link to his review.  

I always find myself compelled to give as balanced an argument as possible, and so was going to make the observation that despite the differences alluded to above, a story about the Black Death and the various ways in which people might face the prospect of annihilation does, sadly, have an added resonance during these days of Ebola - perhaps especially if you are living in Texas.  I am, however, superstitious and that figure - 666 years since the devastating spread of Black Death through these islands - is giving me the collywobbles, so I won't.  

Blue Remembered Bells ... and Tradewinds at Scorriton

The reason I love Dartmoor's bluebells is that oceans of them grow out in the open, before the bracken starts its invasion, and they are a sight to see.  I don't always manage to time my visits properly, however.  For a start, you can never be sure quite when these great tides are going to appear.  In early May 2007, I remember wading through them with two of my children in the Beckabrook valley, yet in 2010 it was June when I saw them rolling in waves down the strip lynchets at Challacombe.  And since then, with the exception of the bluebell woods around the edges of the moor, I've missed them altogether. 

So it was with heart in mouth that I looked towards Grea and Hound Tors from the Bovey Tracey to Widecombe Road, for if you are going to see them anywhere, it's there. And yes, a faint blue haze at Emsworthy!

Not that all patches of blueishness were flowers ... 

... but most of them were, and they were stunning. 

Haytor Rocks

Rippon Tor, far left 

Looking back over Holwell Lawns

  

Witches' Butter on dead gorse

Looking over to Hayne Down

Grea Tor

Haytor Rocks and Holwell Tor

There were other beautiful sights on our walk like the crows flying to and from the noisiest nest I've ever heard on Hound Tor, and the ominous clouds that made for such stunning skyscapes passing over without raining on us (much), and the lovely mug of tea we had at the Hound of the Basket Meals, but today the bluebells had it, and not just on the eastern edge of the moor either.

Here they are at Challacombe ...

and on the steep slopes running down to Sherberton Firs ... 

... and on the banks of the West Dart ...  

... and at my much loved Hexworthy, where I set the main action of my novel, 'Dart'. Did my family living there in the 14th century see them like this?  I hope so.  

The day didn't end with bluebells, however, as a chance meeting with Bristol poet and friend Hazel Hammond in Shaldon the day before had reminded us about Tradewinds, the monthly open mic run by Susan Taylor and Simon Williams at the Tradesmans Arms in Scorriton.  (Hard to resist even without the promise of a pint of my favourite Thompstones cider.)  

Not having come to Devon prepared to read poems, I had to copy a couple out legibly by hand (surprisingly onerous when you are used to tap-tapping on a laptop and then printing them off in a large enough font to read without resorting to glasses).  I chose one I wrote last year about a dead mole at Heaven's Gate and another about Mahala Northcote, who drowned herself at Chagford Bridge in 1867 - a poem in two voices and the first time I'd read it in public. I especially loved to hear other poets reading their poems about Dartmoor, which has sustained my own writing so generously over the years, and Simon's come-all-ye singing at the start of the evening almost made me weep, as it could have leapt straight out of the pages of 'Dart'.  

Unfortunately we didn't stay till the end on account of Ted being a little restive after a time, it being his first poetry reading, but I hope we can revisit another time.