Gidleigh

Gidleigh is a small village in Dartmoor National Park, in West Devon, about two miles north west of Chagford. The parish covers 1,417 hectares. Its website gives the population as 116 in 2001 and 114 in 1901, with a peak of 180 in the mid 19th century,. Legendary Dartmoor notes the Domesday Book spells the name Ghiderleia in 1086.

Gidleigh Castle stands beside the church. It is a small granite rubble tower built around 1300 (some say 1295), generally credited to Sir William de Prouz. The Prouz family held the manor from the 1160s until 1335, and later owners included the Gidley and Rattray families until 1819. It is now seen as a fortified manor house rather than a true castle. Inside it measured about 22 by 13 feet, with a vaulted undercroft and a living room above; the front tower fell in 1920. The site is private.

Holy Trinity church is all granite, mostly 15th century, with a 15th century rood screen and a wooden font of about 1400. A small stream with a clapper bridge runs through the churchyard. Scorhill stone circle on Gidleigh Common is, according to the parish, among the largest and best preserved in Devon. A youth hostel ran in the parish from 1932 to 1988, the school closed in 1971, and Gidleigh Park became a country house hotel. There is no village shop.

On Gidleigh Common, a short walk from Scorhill stone circle, two Grade II listed clapper bridges stand about 60 metres apart: Wallabrook Clapper Bridge, a single granite slab over the Walla Brook, and Teign-e-ver Clapper Bridge, two slabs held by iron bands over the North Teign River. The Tolmen Stone, a granite boulder with a hole through it, is close by.