Following the recent representations about the status of certain Rights of Way in a neighbouring parish, I was amazed to learn that routes, which only a few years back were impassable due to the growth of vegetation caused by disuse, are still classified as roads. Although no authority has done any road maintenance on most of them for a hundred years, neither has any action been taken to officially downgrade them.

      To those of us who travel blithely along the present network of roads it is difficult to imagine that it was not always thus. We are told that there was hardly any wheeled transport around Dartmoor before 1700, any loads being carried by packhorses along tracks that avoided low lying ground which may still have been wooded and undrained. Thus the route between Tavistock and Okehampton followed a different line from the one we traverse. Called the "King Way", this ancient track enters the parish through the fields behind Watervale, coincides with the present road past Beardon and leaves it again near the seventh milestone from Tavistock, descending the hill to cross the Lyd by the old bridge at the bottom of Cdr. Haigh's garden. Sometimes referred to as "Roman Bridge", it more likely dates from medieval times or later. The track then either entered the moor on High Down or from the track opposite Downtown. It then followed the wall past Noddon Gate and continued on to Points and passed behind Sourton Tors.

      The 18th Century was the time of the Turnpike expansion. Groups of local entrepreneurs got Acts passed in Parliament that allowed them to build a road. In return they were allowed to charge all road users a fee or toll. The Okehampton Trust was formed in 1760 and the Tavistock Trust in 1762, although it is unlikely that the road was completed until much later. Crossing in his "Guide to Dartmoor" mentions the date 1817. The Take Off stone at Beardon dates from this period, although the original stone was sadly stolen not so long ago. John Friend, Colin's father, told me that the tether stones had been in his yard for many years until they were replaced at the roadside by himself and his father. The business of paying for an extra horse to help you up the hill was presumably not a success because by 1834 a new bridge had been built at Skitt and the road re-aligned with a less severe gradient, the route still followed by the A386. It would be inconvenient, to put it mildly, if the old route was still classified as a road, now that it has been built on and filled in!

      The turnpike road continued along Downtown straight. The Okehampton Trust ended here and the stone to mark the spot is still in place, but the volume of traffic is such that it is hardly worth risking life and limb to search for it !. The road then continued on to Vale Down, in those days largely undeveloped. It cut across open moorland that would have been part of Fernworthy Down, to reach the enclosures by the Fox and Hounds. It is interesting to speculate whether either the Dartmoor Inn or the Fox date from this period.

      The ground to the higher side of the road has always been rough grazing, although it was ploughed at least once during the Second World War and planted with potatoes. The ground on the lower side of the road may have been enclosed when the Turnpike road was built, but there was a dispute about a hedge between landowners and tenants at the end of the nineteenth century that may have involved this boundary. In essence the tenants claimed rights of grazing and pulled down the wall, while the landowners wanted to enclose their ground and were somewhat peeved when their efforts were quickly destroyed. The case was heard by the Magistrates at Lifton, who found in favour of the landowners, and this decision was upheld in the Court of Appeal. Enclosed or not, the ground still resembled moorland until cleared of scrub and reseeded some thirty plus years ago by John Chapman from Yellands Farm.

      Some readers may remember the eccentric, long bearded Mr. Slade who lived in a cottage, now demolished, on what is now part of Mr. Ward's car park. He was a keen traffic watcher. No doubt he was of some use in helping Miss Martin take her herd of goats across the road on their way to daily grazing on the moor. She lived at Links Tor Lodge and was so deaf that she carried an ear trumpet. Others may recall the Negro sentries who guarded the ammunition dumps down through the avenue in the months preceding D-Day.

      Isn't it surprising how much information can be gleaned about such a short stretch of road ?.