Buckland-in-the-Moor

The clock and the tiny village

The church clock at St Peter's doesn't tell you the time so much as the sentiment. Where the numerals should be, the dial spells out MY DEAR MOTHER, one letter per hour. William Whitley, lord of the manor, had it installed in 1931 as a memorial to his mother, and had it built by John Smith & Sons of Derby, who also made the clocks for St Paul's Cathedral. On the quarters it chimes "All Things Bright and Beautiful." You will hear it before you have quite worked out where the village is.

That takes a moment, because Buckland-in-the-Moor is small in a way that catches people out. Ninety-four people at the last count, a row of thatched cottages in a wooded valley, and no pub, no shop, no café. Britain Express called it a cluster of "chocolate box" thatched cottages "in a wonderfully picturesque setting," which is the sort of place people photograph and then realise they have nowhere to buy a sandwich.

St Peter's and Buckland Beacon

So the village is somewhere you walk from rather than to. St Peter's is Grade I listed, twelfth century in its oldest wall, with a Norman font carved with leaves and stars and a fourteenth-century rood screen still holding its original paint. The vestry is thatched and, according to those who keep track of such things, the only thatched vestry still in active use in England.

The main walk is Buckland Beacon, an easy two miles there and back from the Cold East Cross car park to a summit at 1,282 feet. On a clear day you can see across South Devon to the Channel. Near the top are the Ten Commandment Stones, two granite tablets carved in 1927 to mark Parliament's rejection of the revised Book of Common Prayer — another of William Whitley's projects. The stonemason, W.A. Clements, spent five weeks on the job and was nicknamed "Moses" for it.

The Tavistock Inn and Domesday Buckland

For refreshment you go elsewhere. The nearest pub is the Tavistock Inn at Poundsgate, about a mile and a half off, a stone roadside inn with log fires and homemade pies, steaks and fish at pub prices rather than restaurant ones. It has a place in Dartmoor legend: on the day of the Great Thunderstorm of 1638, the Devil is said to have stopped here for a mug of ale that "hissed as it went down his throat," and paid with gold coins that turned to dry leaves once he left. Worth checking it's still open before you set out.

The village name is older than any of this. Domesday recorded it in 1086 as Bochelande — "book land," held by charter — with eight villagers, three slaves and three and a half plough teams, valued at ten shillings. The Bastard family bought the manor in 1614 and held it for about three hundred years.

Refreshments beyond Buckland

Ashburton, four miles off, has the shops and cafés, and Widecombe-in-the-Moor is three miles the other way. There is no station and no bus through the village; the A38 runs close but the lanes that reach Buckland are narrow enough to keep it feeling further away than it is.

The Whitley headstones

The Whitley headstones in the churchyard are all inscribed the same way: "Live to Live."