Shaugh Bridge

• River: Plym, just below the Meavy confluence
• Grid reference: SX 532 636
• Date: piers about the 17th century; arches rebuilt in 1825 after floodwater in winter 1823-4
• Built of: granite ashlar, two shallow segmental arches on a central pier with cutwaters
• Designation: Grade II, Historic England list entry 1107430 (listed 23 April 1952, amended 2016)

Shaugh Bridge crosses the Plym just after the Meavy joins it, where the river leaves the moor for the wooded valley below. The piers are about 17th century. The arches were rebuilt in 1825 after floodwater from a sudden thaw in the winter of 1823-4; sources give the flood as 1823 or 1824, so we say 1823-4.

Beside the bridge are the drying sheds of the china-clay works (built 1870 to 1895 and closed in 1952), cleared of overgrowth by the Dartmoor Preservation Association in 2009, and the platform of the GWR halt opened in 1907 for visitors to the Dewerstone. The bridge was drawn by J. M. W. Turner: the Tate holds Shaugh Bridge, near Plymouth (1813), and a Dartmoor Society newsletter of spring 2024 reports Dr Susan Andrew's identification of related Turner oil studies as Shaugh Bridge.

The Dewerstone, where the Devil and his black hounds are said to hunt, rises above the footbridge; see The Dewerstone and the Wild Hunt. Upstream, a pipe path follows the old slurry line to Cadover Bridge.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1107430; Dartmoor Explorations, Dartmoor Way stage 10; Tate D09215; Dartmoor Society newsletter 18 (spring 2024).

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.