Dartmoor conchies road crock of gold Royal and Blakey Tor

>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=mIYhhro-jac

Join us on a walk around Dartmoor exploring the Conchie Road and trying to find a crock of Gold and a few Tors. (Royal Tor and Blakey Tor) • Conchie road • The road came into existence in 1917. After military conscription was introduced in 1916 provision was made for those who by dint of “freedom of thought, conscience and/or religion” were to be excused from participating in military conflict. Soon after the prison at Dartmoor was rebranded as “Princetown Work Centre” and, in the remaining years of the war, over 1000 Conscientious Objectors were sent and housed there. Locks were removed from the cells, they were free to walk about the town but, the prison, though not a prison, was still filthy, very damp and cold and crucially, they were put to work. They were expected to carry out 10 hours a day hard, manual labour, with a 6.5 hour day on Saturday. • The great majority of this work was not for their benefit, nor the inhabitants of Princetown but for the Duchy of Cornwall. Farmland improvements were undertaken, stone clearance, drainage and the like which then allowed the Duchy to lease out the newly improved land to tenant farmers. • The Crock of gold. • Here is another of those brilliant Dartmoor legends. The truth about the Crock of Gold is that it is likely to have been a cist which held the cremated remains of a local of the area. However the legend is that it held gold guineas of a dead chieftain and the local folk had heard of this tale and told the story in the local inn. A resident of Royal Hill, Luke Mudge was a net maker for the local rabbit warrens, he made little money in his trade but knew of the Crock of Gold, the folklore was that if you robbed a cist then the evil curse would strike you. Luke however had an accident with boiling water making his hand unusable for making nets. His thirst for the gold grew and one night he took an iron bar to the cap stone and removed it. He put his hand in and found nothing but broken pottery!! Then the clouds gathered and plunged the Royal Hill site into darkness, all of a sudden the capstone began to move, crushing Luke’s hand and trapping him for days. He ended up in hospital and then the workhouse in Tavistock, the locals in the inn re-telling his tale for years to come! As it is the Crock of Gold is a fine cist with great views on a clear day. It is not as it says on the OS map to the north of the path, but to the south about 10 metres from the track. • Link to Simon Dell's book. • https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dartmoor-Con... • Link to GPX file • https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Taf...

#############################

New on site