Newton is the new town. There are many places of that name in England; and the new town nine miles from here was known as Newton on Teign—“Nyweton juxta Teng” in Quo Warranto in 1281. The town is not in Domesday in 1086, and is clearly of later origin than the civil and ecclesiastical districts here, as it stands in two hundreds and two parishes, the boundary being the Loman, which runs through the middle of the town into the Teign. The abbot of Torre abbey acquired the part in Wolborough parish and Haytor hundred; and this is Newton Abbot. Robert Bussell acquired the part in Highweek parish and Teignbridge hundred; and that is Newton Bushel. The two parts were nearly equal in extent until the railway came to Newton Abbot, and since then this part has grown. Most people call the whole place Newton Abbot now, and will tell you they are going to Newton Abbot when they really are going to Newton Bushel. The older people never called it anything but Newton.
The railway company called the station Newton Abbot to avoid confusion with the other Newtons on other companies’ lines. When they made this branch to Moreton, they called it Moretonhampstead to avoid confusion with the other Moretons. But there are other Hampsteads also. I saw a package on the platform there, sent down from London by mistake, and just endorsed—“Try Hemel Hempsted”—another 250 miles by train.
Moreton is the moor town, and the moor is Dartmoor; but the old spelling is retained in Moreton, though in Dartmoor it is obsolete—nobody writes Dartmore now. Such a name as Moretonhampstead is absurd, for tun and ham and stede are Anglo-Saxon words, all meaning the same thing. It came into use somewhere about 1600, I do not know exactly when, nor why.
Dartmoor is a word that has two meanings. Usually it means the whole great tract of granite moorland in the middle of Devon. Technically it only means so much of this as lies in Lydford parish, the remainder being the commons of the surrounding parishes. On the Ordnance map Lydford parish contains 50,801 acres, or nearly eighty square miles. That gives the area of Dartmoor in the strict sense of the term. In the wider sense, with the surrounding commons thrown in, Dartmoor is said to have an area of 200 miles.
The difference between the moor and commons is greater than it looks. The moor belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall; and the Duchy can enclose the land there, but cannot enclose the land upon the commons.
This caused a sharp dispute in 1870 and 1871. A man at Bristol got the Duchy to grant him 280 acres for enclosure, and he began enclosing. People said that this enclosure was on Chagford common. But the Duchy officials said that the Ordnance map was wrong, and the Tithe map was wrong, and all the old inhabitants were wrong, although they had beaten the bounds, since they were young, just where their elders used to beat them. It seemed that nobody outside the Duchy office knew where the boundaries were. Inquiry was made if these officials had received a revelation from above; and then they came to earth with a Perambulation made on 24 July 1240. But that was a well-known document, printed in several books on Devon, and certainly did not prove their case.
Henry the Third granted Dartmoor to his brother the Earl of Cornwall on 10 October 1239, and the Earl had this Perambulation made next year. It is clear that Furnum Regis is King’s Oven at the end of Hurston Ridge, and there is no difficulty about the words next after that, “et inde linealiter usque ad Wallebrokeshede et sic in longum Wallebroke usque cadit in Dertam,” but there certainly is something wrong about the words that go before, “et sic in longum Wallebroke et inde linealiter usque ad Furnum Regis.” How could the boundary run along the Wallabrook before reaching King’s Oven, and afterwards run along the Wallabrook for the whole length of its course from its head to its confluence with the Dart? The officials said there were two Wallabrooks here, and the unknown Wallabrook was the same as Hurston Water. This was really the only basis for their claim. But the Perambulation says ‘Wester Wallebroke’ in speaking of another Wallabrook on the other side of the moor, and would presumably say ‘Norther Wallebroke’ here, or else say ‘Wallebroke’ and then ‘aliam Wallebroke’ just as it says ‘Dertam’ and then ‘aliam Dertam’ on coming to the other Dart. Moreover, the sentence is imperfect as it stands. In all other cases the Perambulation takes the boundary to some fixed point and thence, etc. Either ‘usque ad ...’ has dropped out between ‘Wallebroke’ and ‘et inde,’ or else ‘et sic in longum Wallebroke’ has been put in by mistake. Possibly the scrivener saw the words in the next sentence, and repeated them in the wrong place.
My father joined in the dispute, as the enclosure was threatening our rights of common at Hurston. He looked up the evidence, and wrote a memorandum on it, ending (in red ink) with this—“The farmers will of course pull down the fences, and put the Duchy to the proof of its claims in a court of law.” And of course they pulled them down, and the Duchy dropped its claims. I did not see the demolition done, but have always heard it was an animated scene. Some twenty men went out to do it, and they took a cask of cider with them, to strengthen their conviction in the justice of their cause.
Enclosure is a mania that recurs at intervals; and deluded people think that, if they cut the moor up into fields, they will reap as much as in the valleys 1000 or 1500 feet below. It is noted in Moore’s History of Devonshire, vol. 1, page 486—“The speculators in these undertakings were in general but little versed in agriculture; and having inspected the country in a very cursory manner, were altogether mistaken with respect to the soil of Dartmoor, the produce for which it is adapted, and the methods to be pursued for its improvement: scarcely anyone in the neighbourhood had anything to do with these plans.” That was in 1829, and history repeats itself.
The latest of these Dartmoor schemes has been for taking water from the streams to generate electricity. Such schemes answer very well abroad, in mountainous regions where there are large volumes of water at great heights coming down precipitously. But on Dartmoor the heights are relatively small, and the streams are far apart and never very large, shrinking in summer into brooks, so that big reservoirs would be required for maintaining the supply. I fancy the promoters of this scheme were merely copying a thing that enterprising men had done elsewhere, without considering whether such men would do the same thing here. It seems absurd to spend big sums of money on these moorland streams, when there are great tidal estuaries not many miles away. At the mouths of the Exe and the Teign the estuaries run several miles inland and have very narrow entrances: the tide comes in and out; and twice a day the whole of this gigantic power goes to waste.