Eric Hemery

Eric Hemery was born in Dorset and worked as a professional lecturer and guide on Dartmoor through the 1950s, following an earlier career as a professional musician that included a spell as Director of Music at Malvern Girls' College. He later moved to Clearbrook, on the moor's southern edge, to be closer to the landscape he had spent decades studying.

During the 1970s Hemery began the research and fieldwork that produced High Dartmoor: Land and People (1983), a watershed-by-watershed survey of the moor's geology, history and people running to over a thousand pages, with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales. It is still widely regarded as the standard work on Dartmoor, the first study on this scale since William Crossing's classic 1909 guide. He followed it with three further Dartmoor guides -- Walking the Dartmoor Railroads (1983), Walking the Dartmoor Waterways (1986) and Walking Dartmoor's Ancient Tracks (1986, published shortly after his death) -- and Historic Dart (1982), a history of the River Dart.

Eric Hemery died on 6 April 1986, and is remembered as one of the most knowledgeable Dartmoor writers of the twentieth century. He was the grandfather of Emma Cunis of Dartmoor's Daughter.

Books on this site

• High Dartmoor: Land and People (1983)
• Walking Dartmoor's Ancient Tracks: A Guide to 28 Routes (1986)
• Walking the Dartmoor Waterways (1986)
• Walking the Dartmoor Railroads (1983)
• Historic Dart (1982)