Dartmoor : A Landscape of Occupation

Great Stone Project 2022 :

Dartmoor is a formidable lump of granite in the county of Devon. The seam of granite runs down from Devon and into Cornwall and becomes exposed firstly on the crags of Bodmin Moor and then later down on the moors and coastline of west Cornwall.

My interest in Dartmoor was to visit some of the quarries, antiquities and communities and reflect on how granite had influenced the development of this landscape. I focussed on the region around Princetown and visited several quarries closeby, the church in Princetown and the antiquites nearby. I saw this as potentially a small ongoing interest, and the photographs below reflect just 1 day in this locality.

The only specific goal I had was to find and photograph stone corbels made for London Bridge some 100 years ago at Swell Tor quarry, which had been quarried and subsequently dressed for the bridge, but mistakes were made with measurement, and all corbels were too short and subsequently abandoned on the Moor. After a bit of searching I did manage to find and photograph them.

Evidence of occupation and industry existed everywhere. Although apparently a wild and deserted landscape, this was illusory.

What was of particular interest was that the church in Princetown was built by French and American prisoners from the large jail built there. The prisoners also helped at the local quarries.

My camera was a Fuji 50r with a 45mm 2.8 lens, mounted on a tripod. The clarity of image and dynamic range ( ensuring that both highlight and shadow detail could be retained ) was exemplary. The cloud formations were a particular feature of the day.