This film is part of Free

Driving Dartmoor

A passenger films from the seat of a car crossing Dartmoor

Non-Fiction 1960 4 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for South West Film and Television Archive

Overview

Amateur film captured from the front seat of a car travelling across Dartmoor National Park and taking in Postbridge, Princetown and Hound Tor. The hamlet at Postbridge has a listed clapper bridge over the river believed to have been built in the 13th century to enable pack horses to cross the river and carry tin to the stannary town of Tavistock. Stannary towns were administrative entities with a monopoly over the sale of tin.

Princetown developed in the late 18th Century after moorland was leased by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt from the Prince of Wales. It is the site of Dartmoor Prison built between 1806 and 1809 for prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars and American prisoners from the War of 1812. It is now a low category closed prison. Hound Tor is a granite outcrop with nearby vestiges of Hundatora, a deserted village dating back to 13th century. Dartmoor has the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains in Britain.