Michelcombe

Michelcombe is a hamlet in the parish of Holne on south eastern Dartmoor. White's Directory of 1850 names it, with Stoke, as one of the two hamlets of the parish, and lists three farmers at Michel Coombe: George Barter, Thomas Pearse and George Stranger. It is reached from Holne by a lane and bridleway, a little under a kilometre of downhill walking.

A family history page records that in Norman times the Bosum family were granted land here and that the place was then known as Holne Bosum. That is a family history account, and no firm record of who held it afterwards has turned up.

Close by, Michelcombe Arrishes is a farmstead of four medieval or later buildings, two of them longhouses (the larger about 14 by 3.3 metres), on the south eastern flank of Two Barrows Hill. The Wheal Emma Leat runs through the site and its construction wrecked one of the buildings. The leat carries water 14.9 kilometres from the River Swincombe to the Wheal Emma mine, and a granite clapper bridge about 1.8 metres long crosses it. A boundary stone there carries the letters H and Im and was unveiled at the 1990 beating of the bounds.