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South Brent, Devon
Grid ref: SX 6829 6357 Find this on the Map Reference Finder
Main image: The remains of Brent Moor House. Photograph: Adrian Platt.
Brent Moor House began as a small 17th-century farmstead and was rebuilt as a large house. Francis Meynell, a former naval officer and artist, bought it and an estate of about 3,000 acres in 1855. The Meynells left after the deaths of Mary and Geoffrey, and a memorial to Mary Meynell stands beside the track; sources disagree on the dates. C. A. Mohun-Harris lived here in the 1880s and 1890s and had the Hunter's Stone put up, and it later became the Dartmoor Hunt master's lodge.
From 1941 to 1944 it was a home for deaf children evacuated from Plymouth, and then a youth hostel until 1955. The Royal Marines blew it up in 1968. Crossing's Gems in a Granite Setting (1905, p. 130) mentions its grounds, enclosed more than fifty years before, with trees along the river banks, and his 1914 guide notes the house and cottages close to the river.
It is not the Brent Moor House Cist, a prehistoric site nearby.
Sources: Devon HER MDV67559; Lost Heritage, Brentmoor House; W. Crossing, Gems in a Granite Setting (1905) p. 130 and Guide to Dartmoor (1914) vol. 1 p. 218; Weir, Dartmoor and Exmoor p. 46; Geograph.
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View from Leeden Tor. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography“There, sir, that's the greatest improvement I ever made on your property. I took in more than half an acre and made the fence straight ;" adding, with half a sigh, " Ah ! we can't do that now ; Duchy 's too strict”
Also on Our DartmoorBill Murray — Chair of the Dartmoor Society and traditional unaccompanied singer, a founder member of the Dartmoor Folk Festival who worked closely with Bob Cann.
“'I bant coming acrass the moor awl be myzel tü-night. I be aveāred ov the Jackie-twoads. I zeed scores aw'm when I went acrass Dartymoor last autumn.'”
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