Devon is a land riddled with history, legends, myths and true stories...
Once the home of prehistoric animals and cave-dwellers it went on to become a land of Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement. The British tribes called the Dumnonii lived here on the far reaches of the Roman empire. Place names reflect the settlements and activity of Celtic Christians, the Saxons and also Danish invaders. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066 great pieces of Saxon Devon were given over to be owned by powerful inheritors of the invading army who made it their home. Between this time and the early medieval period many historic castles and homes of England were seated in the Devon valleys and along the coasts. Kings and Queens, Barons, Bishops and Lords ruled the land while the villages and towns began to grow bigger and propser. In the Tudor period mariners such as Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh set sail to the New World to establish the first English Colonies there as well as plunder Spanish Gold.
Explore Berry Pomeroy Castle - History, Folklore and Hauntings
Learn about Clay Tobacco Pipes
The Bickleigh Pottery Festival 2002
The amazingly varied landscape and its busy natural and historical past has been for centuries, and still is, the inspiration of artists, writers and scholars the world over.
During the 17th and 18th Centuries many of the well off households in Devon were able to afford some rather nice crockery. As well as the kinds manufactured by potters locally and in other regions of England some of the more eye-catching pieces were imported in great numbers from the Westerwald region (Germany) as well as the Low Countries. When broken they were usually just thrown in with the rest of the household waste and dumped onto nearby land. Often farmland around an old house contains quite a variety of finds and a few are shown here. The blue ones are typical of the stonewares from the Westerwald and are fragments of Blue-Grey stoneware jugs dating from the late 17th Century. A lot of the same ceramics found in Devon are also found on Colonial sites too. You can read more about these on the websites of places like Port Royal and Jamestowne in America where some list the styles in good detail. If you start coming across a lot of material like this in your area then it is always worth reporting it to your nearest Portable Antiquities Scheme (England) coordinator so that they can log them onto a database which helps to build up a picture of past life in the area.
Georgiana Cavendish the 18th Century Duchess of Devonshire portrayed on a clay smoking pipe of the 1900's
Exe Valley Oilseed crops
Dartmoor...
Mid-Summer Sunrise high above the mists from Haytor Rocks
The unique landscape of Central Devon is dominated by the high Granite Moorlands of Dartmoor, scoured and sculpted over many thousands of years by the hand of nature into a grand wilderness of shadowy hills that are in turn speckled with outcrops called Tors; originally part of a moltern volcanic spine that reached through Cornwall and out past the Scilly Isles towards the Atlantic. The heat released into the surrounding rocks boiled into the sea where coral reefs grew and sometimes spat into the sky. Nearby it spewed and riggled out on to the sea-bed like firey eels. From the depths of the earth mineralised fluids were brought up and these solidified into veins which were mined mainly from medieval times as surface workings and later as deep shafts. The landscape is not so fiery these days but for the glow of the sun rising and setting.
The rounded outcrops of granite of the Moorlands are called "Tors" and if you check out the tourist maps for the region you will see they have been named after people, places, events and the shapes they suggest. The one pictured here overlooks Widecombe in the Moor.
A newly born Dartmoor pony! How cute can you get? Dartmoor ponies are often seen in groups and they wonder into the roads so remember to drive slowly when visiting this part of Devon.
The Sunset over Widecombe 2008
Traditional Oak trees growing in the meadows at Uplowman in East Devon.
An old Twisted Oak... a headless wizzard does an ancient fertility dance before a seated crocodile
