Buckland in the Moor

Buckland in the Moor is a small hamlet of thatched granite cottages above the Dart valley, and one of the most photographed places on Dartmoor. Its church of St Peter holds the curiosity that most people come for: instead of numerals, the clock face carries the letters MY DEAR MOTHER, put there in the 1930s by the local landowner William Whitley in memory of his. It is the kind of gesture that could be sentimental and somehow is not, and it has made a small moorland church famous.

Whitley also had the Ten Commandments carved into two great slabs of granite on Buckland Beacon above the village, to mark the rejection of a proposed new prayer book, and the walk up to them is short, steep and worth it for the view over the Dart valley and out towards the sea. The hamlet itself has no shop or pub and very little room to park, but the cottages, the church and the beacon together make it one of the essential stops on the eastern moor.