Sticklepath

Leat, Ale and the Devonshire

A leat runs along the back wall of the Devonshire Inn, and it is doing two jobs at once. It cools the cask ales on their stillage, and a few yards on it turns the waterwheel at Finch Foundry next door. Not many pub cellars share their plumbing with a working forge.

The Devonshire Inn is a 16th-century thatched local, once the end of a terrace of Elizabethan cottages. There is no fixed menu — you get home-cooked food when the landlady is cooking — and the walls carry the flags of countries whose languages are spoken in Devon. A reviewer for CAMRA's Top 100 was served Rich's cider from the barrel at £1.60 and called the place "one of the best 30 minutes of my pubbing life," with the landlady "simply the most intelligent company all year." Dartmoor cask ale and local cider fill out the rest.

The Taw River Inn and Village Shop

The other pub is the Taw River Inn, formerly the Taw River Hotel, thatched like everything else. One large beamed room, a huge inglenook fireplace, two massive stone columns holding up the central beam. Children and pets are more than welcome, the food is the wholesome home-cooked sort, and the ales are competitively priced alongside a cider made in the village. There is a beer garden.

The village shop doubles as a Post Office, though the counter only runs its outreach in the village hall twice a week. Population is around 450, spread over roughly 400 acres.

Fault Line to River Paths

The name is generally read as "steep path," and the village sits at the foot of a steep hill on the old Exeter–Okehampton road. What makes it odd is the geology: unusually for Dartmoor, Sticklepath sits just outside the granite, on volcanic and metamorphic rock along the Sticklepath Fault — a major strike-slip fault that runs the width of the peninsula from Bideford to Torbay. The River Taw comes off the moor and tumbles through, into the wooded Skaigh Woods toward Belstone Cleave.

That is where the walking is. The Sticklepath–Belstone circular follows the south bank of the Taw for three miles through Skaigh Woods, crossing at the Tarka Bridge and passing the walled Skaigh Warren, with views up the valley to Belstone and open moorland beyond. A shorter Tom Pearse Riverside Walk starts from Finch Foundry and takes in the same bridge and leat.

The Last Water-Powered Forge

Finch Foundry itself is the reason most people stop. William Finch, born 1779, ran a forge here that at its peak turned out 400 edge tools a day — shovels, scythes, sickles — until the roof collapsed in 1960. The National Trust took it on in 1994, and it is the last water-powered forge in England.

Quakers and the Pearse Name

The Quakers were strong here in the 17th century, and the sergemaker Thomas Pearse bought their burial ground for £14 so people of all beliefs could be buried in it. The Pearse name went further than that: Tom Pearse of Sticklepath, and his grey mare, are the ones the revellers borrow in "Widecombe Fair."