MORETON HAMPSTEAD
Moreton Church—The almshouse—The dancing tree—Other dancing trees—The vintner's bush—The calculating boy—Life of Mr. Bidder—The ravens of Brennan—Grimspound—The Great Central Trackway—Stone rows—The Lych Way—Churches—Bowerman's Nose—Ashton—The Duchess of Kingston—Hennock—The Loveys family—Parson Harris—John Cann's Rocks—Lustleigh Cleave—Hound Tor and Hey Tor Rocks—Widecombe—The Ballad of Tom Pearse.
Moreton, with its whitewashed cottages and thatched roofs, has a primitive appearance, and withal a look of cleanliness. It is now the fashion to go to Chagford, which has been much puffed, but Moreton makes quite as good a headquarters for Dartmoor excursions.
It has a fine church of the usual type, that was gutted at its so-called restoration, and a remarkably fine carved oak screen was turned out, but happily secured by the late Earl of Devon, who gave it to Whitchurch, near Tavistock. A few years ago the fine screen of South Brent was thrown out when the church was made naked under the pretence of restoration, and allowed to rot in an outhouse.
Moreton undoubtedly at one time was a town in the moors, and the bold ridge that runs from Hell Tor to Hennock to the east was till comparatively recently furze-and-heather-clad moor.
An object of singular picturesqueness in Moreton is the almshouse, with the date of 1637, with a charming arcade of granite stunted pillars. Opposite another almshouse has been erected in modern times, to show how badly we can do things now when our forefathers did things well.
In the same street is the base of the old village cross and the head of the same broken off. In the place of the cross the "Dancing Tree" has sprung up, that has been made use of by Mr. Blackmore in his novel of Christowel. The tree in question is unhappily now in a condition to be danced round, not any longer to be danced upon.
The tree is an elm, and it grows out of the basement of the old village cross, the lower steps of which engirdle the trunk; and a fragment of the head of the cross lies just below. The tree must have sprung up after the destruction of the cross, or, possibly enough, it was itself the cause of destruction, much in the same way as trees have destroyed and rent in sunder the tomb of Lady Anne Grimstone, in Tewin churchyard.
Of this latter the story goes that Lady Anne on her deathbed declared that she could not and would not believe in the resurrection of the body. Rather, she was reported to have said, will I hold that nine trees shall spring out of my dead body.
Now in process of time the great stone sepulchral mass placed over her grave split asunder, and through the rents issued the shoots of nine trees, six ash and three sycamores, together with great trunks and coils of ivy, that among them have tossed up and hold in suspense the fragments of Lady Anne's tomb. The story is of course made to account for the phenomenon.