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Tavy Cleave
Peter Tavy, Tavistock, Devon
Grid ref: SX 5538 8331 Find this on the Map Reference Finder
- Height: Sharp Tor (Tavy Cleave), the principal outcrop, 441 m
- Grid reference: SX 554 830 (start of the Cleave); Sharp Tor SX 5540 8332
- Parish: Peter Tavy (Sharp Tor)
- Rock: Granite
Tavy Cleave is the steep gorge of the River Tavy on north-west Dartmoor, starting near SX 554 830. A river valley enclosed in a gorge is rare on Dartmoor, and a walk through it involves a lot of boulder clambering. Five outcrops, the Tavy Cleave Tors, line one side. The principal one, Sharp Tor (Tavy Cleave), is 441 m at SX 5540 8332 in Peter Tavy parish, with a steep vertical east face above the river.
Ger Tor (SX 547 831) and Hare Tor (SX 551 842) stand around the gorge, and upstream lie the hut circles of Watern Oke. Most of the area is in the Willsworthy firing range, whose land was bought in the 1900s and is marked by War Department boundary stones, such as WD 21 at the Rattlebrook crossing.
John Trevena's novel Furze the Cruel (1907) puts the Tavy family's cottage close to the edge of the Cleave, names it Ger Cottage after the tor, and calls the gorge perhaps the finest thing of its kind on Dartmoor.
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