Haytor Granite Tramway

The Haytor Granite Tramway is a striking survival from Dartmoor's industrial past. Built in the 1820s to transport granite blocks from the quarries at Haytor Down to the Stover Canal near Bovey Tracey, this ingenious system used stone-built rails and wheeled trucks to move stone across terrain where horses and carts would struggle. The tramway's path is still traceable across the moor, with substantial sections of its distinctive stone construction visible to walkers.

Standing on the high ground above Haytor, you can trace the line of the tramway and imagine the sheer scale of effort required to extract and move granite from this exposed moorland. The site connects you to a period when Dartmoor's raw materials fed the building ambitions of the Industrial Revolution, leaving behind engineering that survives more durably than most of what it built.