Buckland in the Moor

Buckland-in-the-Moor is a village and civil parish in Teignbridge district, within Dartmoor National Park. The 2001 census counted 94 residents. It is in Domesday Book. In the early 1200s the de Boklondes family, who held the manor, made a large gift of woodland and moorland to Torre Abbey. Later the Bastard family held it, and boundary stones marked EFB 1837 are theirs.

The church of St Peter has a Norman font of Caen stone and a thick Norman south nave wall. It first appears in a document in Bishop Lacey's register of 1420. The dedication to St Peter was recorded in 1547, forgotten after the Reformation and revived in the late 1800s. The rood screen is medieval; sources say 14th and 15th century. The thatched vestry in the churchyard is called the only one in use in the UK. A Georgian building of about 1750 to 1800, it may have been a church house or cottage, and parish records of 1635 mention a church house.

The clock has no numerals. Both faces read MY DEAR MOTHER. William Whitley, Lord of the Manor, gave it in memory of his mother Elizabeth, in 1930 or 1931 depending on the source. John Smith and Sons of Derby made it, and it chimes 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' on the quarter hour. The tower has eight bells, five of them cast in 1759.

Whitley also had the Ten Commandments cut on rocks on Buckland Beacon (1,282 feet). Parliament had rejected a revised Prayer Book in 1927, and he engaged the Exeter stonemason W A Clements. Clements worked from 15 December 1927 to 14 June 1928, living in a cow shed. The stones carry an eleventh text, 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another'.