Belstone

Belstone is a village and civil parish on the northern edge of Dartmoor, about 1,000 feet up, with some 250 residents according to the village website. The parish is bounded by the East Okement on the west and the Taw on the east. The church of St Mary the Virgin has priests recorded from 1260; the village website says it shows signs of Norman origins and possibly Saxon ones, though most of the building is 14th and 15th century.

Around the central Great Green are the Tors Inn, the old stocks and a memorial stone for the coronation of George V in 1911. The Zion Chapel was built in 1841 and was the post office from 1937 to 2002, and the pound was turned into a garden in 1988 after standing derelict following the death of the poundkeeper William Brock in 1913. Between 1890 and 1905 about 21 new houses were added to the original 9 farms and a similar number of cottages. The village still beats its bounds every seven years.

Above the village the Nine Maidens is a Bronze Age cairn circle of about 16 stones with an internal diameter of 7 metres, the stones 0.5 to 0.8 metres high, around a robbed kistvaen. Samuel Rowe counted 17 in 1848. Legend says the maidens were turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday, and the circle is also called the Seventeen Brothers. A broken stone nearby is said to be the piper. The count never comes out the same twice. Copper was mined at Belstone Consols, which took in Taw River and Copper Hill mines, with output recorded from 1867 to 1891.