CHAPTER II. THE LYKE-WAY.
The whole of Dartmoor Proper is included within the bounds of a single parish, the parish of Lydford. The moor belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall, and at Lydford stood the Ducal Castle. For two hundred years this castle has been in ruins, but stands a monument of possession, and just as the estate has been eaten into and pillaged through a long course of years, so has the castle of the Duke been broken into and robbed, to furnish cottages with stone, and cowstalls with timber.
Parishes when first constituted followed the boundaries of manors, consequently, as the Duke of Cornwall claimed the entire Forest of Dartmoor, that whole forest was included within the parish limits. It is the largest parish as to acreage in England, and that with the scantiest population in proportion to its area.
In former times the moor attracted miners, it does so still, but to a very limited extent; extensive operations were anciently carried on in every stream bed in quest of tin.
The vast masses of upturned refuse testify to the vastness of the mining works that once made the moors teem with people. The workers in the mines lived in huts merely constructed of uncemented granite blocks, thatched with turf; the ruins of which may still be inspected. But even these ruins are comparatively recent, though dating from the Middle Ages, for there were earlier toilers on the same ground, and for the same ends, who also lived on the moor, and have also left there their traces; they dwelt in circular beehive huts, like those of the Esquimaux, warmed by a central fire, and covered in by a conical roof that had a smoke-vent in the midst. Tens of thousands of these remain, some scattered, most congregated within circular enclosures, and hundreds of thousands have been, and are being, annually destroyed. In connection with these are the megalithic circles and lines of upright stones, cairns that contain tombs made of rude stone blocks set on end, and covered with slabs equally rude.
Who were the people that made of Dartmoor at a remote period a scene of so much activity? Probably a race that occupied Britain before the British, and which was subjugated by the inflowing, conquering Celts.
Throughout the Middle Ages, down to the Civil Wars, the tin was much worked, and men living on the moor also died there; and dying there had to be buried somewhere, and that somewhere was properly in the parish churchyard.