Throwleigh

Granite on the hillside

The village square has a granite cross, a pond, and a church that towers over everything around it. Throwleigh arranges itself on a hillside in the northeast corner of Dartmoor, a few miles southeast of Okehampton, and almost every building is made of the same local granite as the moor above. Thatched farmsteads cling to the slope. High open moorland begins immediately to the west.

You should know before you arrive that the village has no shop. For provisions you drive to Chagford, three miles off, which has butchers, a deli and an old-fashioned ironmonger, or to Okehampton, six miles away. Buses are the kind described as very limited rural, which in practice means a car is essential.

Ale and medieval stone

The pub isn't in Throwleigh either. The Northmore Arms sits in the neighbouring hamlet of Wonson, and it's the parish's only one. It pours Dartmoor IPA and Dartmoor Jail Ale straight from the cask, keeps two local ciders, and is a CAMRA-listed favourite. One description calls it "an unspoilt rustic pub with traditional values and a hospitable welcome." The food is home-cooked and served all day, though it's worth booking in summer. There's a garden with free parking. It closes on Mondays and does B&B rooms.

St Mary the Virgin is the building on the square you can't ignore. Grade I listed, mostly fifteenth-century granite with a majestic west tower, first recorded in 1268. Inside there are remnants of a medieval rood screen carved with naturalistic leaves in 1544, a pulpit assembled from old bench-ends, a granite Easter Sepulchre niche, and a Ninian Comper window of St Cecilia. The roof bosses include a Green Man and the Three Hares — three rabbits sharing three ears between them in a circle, an emblem of the moor's medieval tin miners.

Doorways and Church House

The antiquarian John Stabb, writing around 1908, thought its priest's doorway was "probably the finest priest's doorway in Devonshire; one would hardly expect in an out-of-the-way village to find such an excellent piece of architecture."

Across the square is Church House, an early-sixteenth-century granite building under thatch. It spent years divided into three cottages before being reunited into one.

Common paths, ancient records

The reason to come is the walking. Throwleigh Common rises to the west, open high moorland scattered with prehistoric habitation and the remains of old tinstreaming works. From Shilstone Tor above the village you can loop up to Cosdon Beacon and down to a remarkable triple stone row that locals call The Cemetery, coming back across the common in about two hours. A longer route from Gidleigh takes in Scorhill stone circle and Kestor Rocks.

When the Domesday surveyors reached here in 1086 they counted ten villagers, a smallholder, three slaves, four cattle and thirty-two sheep, and valued the whole place at four pounds.

Wonson and a spring churchyard

The village hall, over in Wonson, was built in 1949 out of a WWII Nissen hut. One visitor, arriving in spring, wrote only: "I loved the untidy churchyard covered in daffodils. So English!"