Widdecombe-in-the-Moor
Widdecombe is called cold and bleak, and it is not only with the terrific tempest that its name is associated, for when the snow fell thickly the South Devon folk used to look—as perhaps they still do—towards the moor, and say to the children: 'Widdecombe hills are picking their geese, faster, faster, faster.'
About twelve miles south-west of Widdecombe is Sheeps Tor, a sharply defined height that has given its name to the parish and tiny village that it overshadows. Originally it was called Shettes Tor—that is, Steep Tor, the word being derived from the Celtic syth.
Hidden among the great piles of moorstone heaped upon the tor is a cave known as the Pixies' House. Mrs Bray describes an expedition that she made to Sheeps Tor, and how, on asking her way to the cave, she was told to 'be careful to leave a pin, or something of equal value, as an offering to these invisible beings; otherwise they would not fail to torment us in our sleep.' Grass grows on the lower slopes, but near the summit there spreads a 'bold and shelving sweep of about two hundred feet, the granite ... totally bare, save where it was here and there covered by a coating of mosses and lichens. It lies tossed about in enormous masses in every direction.' The cave itself is in the midst of 'most confused masses of rock, that looked as if they had been tossed about by the fiends in battle,' and the entrance itself is a 'cleft between two rocks.' A story of human interest is also connected with the cave, for here Walter Elford, Lord of the Manor, was forced to hide when the country was being searched for him. Squire Elford was a Parliamentarian, and one of the 'secluded' members of the Long Parliament; but he was so far thrown into opposition by the development of the Protector's policy that he reached the point of plotting against him, and in consequence a party of Desborough's troops were sent in pursuit of the squire to his own house. Fortunately, among the huge boulders the entrance to the cave was very difficult to find, and the Pixies' House proved a safe refuge until the search-parties were withdrawn.
About fifteen miles from Widdecombe, on the north-west side of the moor, lies Lydford, whose size is in no way proportionate to its antiquity. 'Doubtless,' says Risdon, 'in the Saxons' heptarchy, it was a town of some note, that felt the furious rage of the merciless Danes.' And it is true that in 997 Lydford was burned down by them. At this time Lydford had its own mint, and money was coined here; and in the Domesday Book it was described as being taxed equally with London. But the village is very conspicuously a victim of 'the whirligig of time,' and William Browne gives a most unflattering picture of its appearance in the middle of the seventeenth century:
Sheepstor
'I oft have heard of Lydford law,
How in the morn they hang and draw,
And sit in judgment after:
At first I wondered at it much;
But soon I found the matter such
As it deserves no laughter.
'They have a castle on a hill;
I took it for some old windmill,
The vanes blown off by weather.
Than lie therein one night 'tis guessed
'Twere better to be stoned, or pressed,
Or hanged, ere you come hither.