Bellever

Bellever is a hamlet on the East Dart, about two kilometres south of Postbridge. The earliest record is a Duchy of Cornwall paper of 1355 that names the farm Welford. By the 17th century it had become Bellaford. The origin is debated: Wikipedia gives spring plus ford, and notes Eric Hemery's alternative of mine plus ford. The ford was on an old route towards Lydford.

Until the Second World War it was little more than a couple of farms. Bellever Farm belonged to the Duchy and was known for bringing Galloway and Aberdeen Angus cattle to Dartmoor. The Forestry Commission bought the farm in 1931 and began planting, and the conifer forest now surrounds the hamlet on three sides. Several houses were built in the 1950s for forestry workers. The farm barns were let to the Youth Hostels Association in 1934, and the hostel is the oldest still working in Devon.

The medieval clapper bridge over the East Dart stands beside the later road bridge. It had four slabs, each about 2.5 metres long, and the central slab was missing by about 1850; nobody now knows what happened to it. It is thought to lie on the Lych Way, the old route from the ancient tenements on the Forest to Lydford. Lakehead Hill in the forest has stone rows and cairn circles, and Bellever Tor is about 1.5 kilometres south west of the hamlet.