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Haytor Vale, Devon
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The Haytor Quarries are a group of five disused granite workings on the eastern side of Dartmoor: Haytor (Main), Holwell, Rubble Heap, Harrow Barrow (Emsworthy East) and Western (Emsworthy West). They are distinct both from Haytor Rocks, the tor itself, and from the Haytor Granite Tramway that carried their stone away. Quarrying began around 1820 under George Templer, who also built the tramway and the Stover Canal to move the granite to the coast.
Stone cut here supplied the new London Bridge, completed in 1831, travelling down the tramway and along the Stover Canal to Teignmouth for shipment. The quarries fell largely idle between 1841 and 1851, had a brief revival through the 1850s, and closed for good in 1858 as cheaper Cornish granite took the market. What remains today includes the flooded main pit, with surviving quarrying winding gear still visible at its edge.
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Mount Misery Cross. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography“'Tis my legs. They bain't contented, like. 'Tis no odds where I put 'em, they wun't bide contented, no place.”
Also on Our DartmoorRestored cist and two cairns, west slope of Great Gnats' Head — A cist 0.91 m by 0.81 m and 0.78 m deep, restored after a dig in 1901, with two round cairns, one 4 m south and one 70 m east-north-east, on the west slope of Great Gnats' Head.
“He told me incredible tales of the large, glaring-eyed monsters that had stared at him as he lay in the bog.”
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