Sticklepath

Sticklepath is a village on the River Taw on the north-eastern edge of Dartmoor, about 450 residents on around 400 acres, according to the village website. Settlement goes back to the 11th century or earlier, and the village was split between the parishes of South Tawton, Belstone and Sampford Courtenay until it became a civil parish in the 1980s (1987 in one account). It sits on the old road west from Exeter, which an 1899 writer called the old and deserted mail coach road into Cornwall.

Quakers were strong here: up to 200 are said to have lived in the village at one time. The Quaker burial ground behind Finch Foundry has a first recorded burial in 1713 (Benjamin Bellamy), and the last Sticklepath Quaker, John Langmead, was buried in 1818. Thomas Pearse, a sergemaker, bought the ground in 1836 for £14 and made it a non-denominational cemetery. Methodism followed, with the chapel built in 1816, and John Wesley preached in the village. The Devonshire Inn is a 17th century building given a Georgian makeover around 1800.

William Finch took over a cloth mill in 1814 and made it a tool works, which closed in 1960. At its peak it made around 400 tools a day, and the National Trust, which now runs it, calls it the last working water-powered forge in England. Visitors see the waterwheels that drove the hammers, shears and a large sharpening stone. The village population was about 550 to 600 in 1841 and fell afterwards as people emigrated and work changed.