CHAPTER XV.
YELVERTON
Yelverton or Elford-town—Longstone—The Elfords—"The Silly Doe"—Mr. Collier on otter-hunting—Sheeps Tor church—The reservoir—The old vicarage—The Bull-ring—Rajah Brooke—Roman's Cross—The Deancombe valley—Coaches—Down Tor stone row—Nun's Cross—Roundy Farm—Clakeywell Pool—Strange voices—Leather Tor—Drizzlecombe and its remains—Old customs at Sheeps Tor—Meavy—Church—Marchant's Cross—China-clay and William Cookworthy—The Dewerstone—The Wild Huntsman—Tavistock.
Yelverton is a corruption of Elford-town. The mansion near the station was formerly a seat of the Elfords of Sheeps Tor. The family is now extinct, at least in the neighbourhood where at one time it was of dignity and well estated. Yelverton is itself a mere collection of villa residences of Plymouth men of business, but it forms a convenient point of departure for many interesting expeditions.
The principal residence of the Elfords was at Longstone, in Sheeps Tor, where the old house remains little altered, and where the windstrew should be seen, a granite platform, raised above the field, on which thrashing could be carried on by the aid of the winds that carried away the chaff.
THE DEWERSTONE
The tor which gives its name to the village and parish stands by itself, and rises to about 1,200 feet. It is a picturesque hill, and only needs the addition of another couple of hundred put to its elevation to make it perfect.
The basin below the village was anciently a lake, the water being retained by a barrier of rock where stands now the dam for the reservoir. This, in time, was silted up to the depth of ninety feet, and now the Plymouth Corporation, by the construction of a fine and eminently picturesque barrier across the narrow gorge through which the Meavy flows, have reconverted this basin into a lake.
Near the summit of the tor is the Pixy Cave, in which Squire Elford remained concealed whilst the Roundheads searched Longstone for him. Some faithful tenants in the village kept him supplied with food till pursuit was at an end. The Elfords inherited Longstone from the Scudamores at the close of the fifteenth century. The parish was then called Shettes Tor, from the Celtic syth, steep; but the name has been altered in this or last century. The last Elford of Sheeps Tor was John, who married Admonition Prideaux, and died without issue in 1748, his six children having predeceased him. A side branch of the family—to which, however, Sheeps Tor did not fall—produced Sir William Elford, Bart., of Bickham, but he died in 1837, without male issue, and the title became extinct. His monument is in Totnes church.