Shaugh Woods

Shaugh Woods covers the steep oak-wooded valleys where the River Plym and River Meavy meet at Shaugh Bridge, about 6km north of Plymouth on the south-western edge of Dartmoor. Most of the site is owned by the National Trust as part of its Goodameavy estate. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, protected chiefly for the diversity of moss and lichen recorded here, with over thirty lichen species including Sticta limbata and Thelotrema lepadinum. The canopy is dominated by pedunculate oak, once managed by coppicing, with beech, ash, alder along the riverbanks, hazel, holly, rowan and hawthorn beneath, and ferns including Tunbridge filmy-fern in the understorey. Buzzard, tawny owl, great spotted woodpecker, nuthatch, dipper and grey wagtail are all recorded in the woods.

The woods take in the granite outcrop of Dewerstone Rock, and the Iron Age hillfort prehistoric enclosures near Dewerstone Cottage, whose stone ramparts and hut circles crown Dewerstone Hill above the river. The Dewerstone is also the setting of the Wild Hunt legend associated with the hilltop.

Beyond its ecology and archaeology, the woods carry substantial 19th-century industrial remains: a disused iron mine, a quarry tramway and a brick kiln, together with evidence of charcoal burning, all reached along the National Trust's waymarked Plym Valley trail and the shorter Dewerstone Wood walk. In 2024, the entomologist Clive Turner recorded beetle specimens here as one of his three Dartmoor survey sites that year.

Sources: Wikipedia, National Trust, Shaugh Bridge.

Photo: "Footbridge, Dewerstone Wood" by Crispin Purdye, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo: "Footbridge, Dewerstone Wood" by Crispin Purdye, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.