Sheepstor

Sheepstor is a small village on Dartmoor's western side, grouped with Meavy and Walkhampton under Burrator Parish Council. Its church of St Leonard is grade I listed and was built around 1450 in local granite, with white elvan window mullions quarried on Roborough Down. It was restored in the 1860s. The rood screen is a 1914 replacement based on medieval fragments, and the sources name different designers, Henry Reed and Frederick Bligh Bond. The tower has six bells, five cast in 1769, and an iron ring in granite recalls bull-baiting. Two granite crosses in the churchyard were restored in 1911.

James Brooke, first Rajah of Sarawak, bought the Burrator estate in 1858 and came back to live there in 1863. He died in 1868 and has a red Aberdeen granite chest tomb in the churchyard. Charles Brooke, the second Rajah, who died in 1917, has a carved granite boulder, and both monuments are grade II listed. The church has memorials to the Brooke family and a window for Sarawak prisoners of war. The Elford family have monuments there too.

The Sheepstor Dam was completed in 1894, and Burrator Reservoir opened on 21 September 1898, just below the village.

Below the tor is Pixies' Cave, a hollow in the granite about 6 by 4 by 5 feet. Visitors used to leave pins or scraps of cloth for the pixies. The story says John Elford hid there when troops were sent after him in the Civil War period, and that villagers fed him. Legendary Dartmoor calls him a Parliamentarian who opposed Cromwell's policies, while another source calls him a Royalist, and nobody can prove either.