The huge, fractured granite outcrop of Houndtor, near Manaton, is said to resemble a pack of hounds in full cry. They are connected with the story of Bowerman, the hunter, whose petrified figure stands about a mile north. The tor is reputedly the haunt of the phantom hound from Hell, which raced across the moor to howl at the tomb of Richard Cabell at Buckfastleigh.

The story of the wicked squire Cabell, who died in 1677 having sold his soul to the Devil, is thought to have been the inspiration and setting for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’(1902).

MEDIEVAL VILLAGE

A short distance, south-east of Houndtor are the remains of a deserted medieval hamlet. This hamlet was set on an east-facing slope overlooking the deep but gentle wooded valley of Becka Brook. To the north rises the huge fractured outcrop of Houndtor, while southward lies the less extensive though equally dominatiing cliff of Greater Rocks.

The substantial remains now visible are those of a cluster of eleven stone buildings – three dwellings and their ancillary structures – that represent the final phase of settlement at Houndtor, from about 1200-1350. Excavation in the 1960s revealed evidence that beneath the stone buildings lay a series of turf-walled dwellings dating back to the tenth or eleventh century. The outlying medieval farmhouse to the north was built within a prehistoric enclosure.

The whole area was reoccupied in medieval times by the farmers of the village and its outlying homesteads - their well-worked fields obliterating much of the prehistoric ones and presumably a number of hut circles as well. Unusually, the early boundaries were almost entirely ignored by the succeeding ones, but the field system was probably never very extensive, perhaps not much more than the wide strip above the medieval village terminating in a large enclosure based on Houndtor. This still survives, and also a field or two, south of Greater Rocks. In suitable light the ‘ridge and furrow’ of medieval ploughing can be seen

The inhabitants of Houndtor would have practised a mixed agricultural economy, growing such crops as corn,oats and rye. Further evidence of cereal growing comes from the presence of kilns built into three of the outbuildings on the main site, which were used to dry corn.

We are unsure of why these settlements were deserted in the mid fourteenth century. It is suggested that it was because of the climate deterioration that set in at this time. Certainly, the need to dry corn artificially at Houndtor is evidence of a wetter climate. It may possibly be that the Black Death, which arrived in England in 1348, contributed towards the desertion of some sites. Plague would have spread through the tightly clustered dwellings very quickly once it had entered them. It might not have been thought worth the trouble of reoccupation because of new developments of farming practice, which came with the change from an open-field communal farming system to the more individual system of private management.

back