Bellever Clapper Bridge

• River: East Dart
• Grid reference: about SX 6584 7733 (the listing gives it to six figures)
• Also called: Bellaford Bridge in Crossing (1888, 1914) and Rowe; Bellavur in speech
• Date: medieval origin
• Spans: originally four; two lintels survive (Historic England)
• Designation: Grade II, Historic England list entry 1305963 (listed 28 October 1987)

The clapper at Bellever is of medieval origin and probably carried the Lych Way, the old corpse road to Lydford. Historic England says it had four spans and that two lintels survive; another account describes two piers and three slabs of about 2.5 m. Beside it is a road bridge of the early 19th century, said to have been built to let the Vicar of Widecombe reach the new church at Princetown.

Accounts of the missing centre slab disagree. Samuel Rowe noted it gone by 1848; William Crossing reported in 1889 that a local man admitted sliding it off as a boy; others say there never was a centre slab, or that vandals pushed stones into the river. County stones marked C remain on each side, set after the 1841 Devon act.

The hamlet was Welford in 1355 and Bellaford by 1663. The bridge is near Bellever Forest and Bellever Tor; the neighbouring crossing at Postbridge is Postbridge clapper bridge.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1305963; Dartmoor Explorations, Bellever Bridge and Cyclopean Bridge; Legendary Dartmoor, Bellever Bridge; Dartmoor: A New Study (1977).

This bridge is one of the crossings gathered in Dartmoor Bridges, a guide to the clapper bridges, packhorse bridges and road bridges of the moor and its edge.