Crockern Tor
| Crockern Tor | |||
| Devon | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Parliament Rock on Crockern Tor | |||
| Range: | Dartmoor | ||
| Summit: | 1,300 feet SX616757 50°33’56"N, 3°57’18"W | ||
Crockern Tor is a hill spur on the open high moor of Dartmoor in Devon, marked by a distinctive rock 'tor', composed of two large outcrops of rock. It is found just over half a mile north-west of Two Bridges, where the roads across the high moor meet, and is easily reached with a short, stiff climb from the B3212 Moretonhampstead road. At its highest, the spur reaches 1,300 feet above sea level. The place is part of a ridge which rises higher to the north to a summit at Higher White Tor (1,730 feet).
The lower outcrop was the open-air meeting place of the Devonshire Stannary Parliament from the early 14th century until the first half of the 18th century. On Parliament Rock, the Lord Warden of the Great Court of the Devon Tinners supposedly sat during meetings of the Court.
Local tradition has it that there was a large, rough-hewn stone chair on the hill for the Judge, or in other accounts a stone table, and that it was brought off Crockern Tor in the 18th century to be installed in Dunnabridge Pound below Laughter Tor, two miles to the west-south-west of Crockern Tor. The Judge's Chair, as it is known, can be seen today, built into the stone wall of the Pound.
Descriptions
The tor was one of only three features on Dartmoor that Tristram Risdon considered important enough to include in his Survey of Devon which was compiled in the early 17th century. In it he said that "Crockern Torr" had "a table and seats of moorstone [granite], hewn out of the rocks, lying in the force of all weather, no house or refuge being near it".
The tor was also one of the few historic features to appear on Benjamin Donn's one inch to the mile map of Devon of 1765. It lies adjacent to the trans-Dartmoor packhorse track, so has been a significant landmark for travellers since time immemorial.
Stannary court
The tor was the hub of the four Dartmoor stannary areas – Ashburton, Chagford, Tavistock and Plympton – whose boundaries radiate outwards from Crockern Tor. The Stannary Court was convoked here when deemed necessary, at irregular intervals, by the Lord Warden, who summoned 24 representatives or "jurates" from each of the four stannaries. Each meeting probably continued for several days and dealt with matters such as setting stannary law, registering tinworks and mills, hearing petitions and imposing penalties on those guilty of breaking the stannary laws.
There is evidence for ten assemblies at Crockern Tor: in 1494, 1510, 1532, 1533, 1552, 1567, 1574, 1600, 1688 and 1703.[1] At the earliest documented meeting, on 1 September 1494, Sir John Stepcote presided as vice-warden of the Devon Stannaries. Sir Walter Raleigh was Lord Warden of the Stannaries for many years, and it is recorded that he presided at one Court at Crockern Tor, on 27 October 1600. The last meeting for which records survive was on 23 September 1703 at which the Warden, John Granville, 1st Baron Granville and the Vice-Warden, the Honourable Samuel Rolle,[2] opened the court at 8 a.m.
The last court was said to have been held in or around 1745, but no documentation exists, and considering that the tin industry on Dartmoor had by then declined greatly, it could have been only a small affair.
Patchy and conflicting evidence indicates that compared to the bare nature of the site today, there were chairs, seats, a table and a shelter, all made of granite, which were used when the court met. These items were supposedly taken away or broken up in the late 18th century, possibly used as a source of stone for the buildings that started to appear on the moor after the roads were improved.
The cynical view of the Crockern Tor parliaments was expressed by Douglas St Leger-Gordon, a writer on Devon history, who casts doubt on the existence of any substantial meetings at this "singularly unsuitable" place in his 1963 book, 'Portrait of Devon', suggesting that any proceedings must have been frequently disrupted by the wind carrying away someone's hat, or "scattering the minutes of the last meeting insecurely held in the warden's numbed fingers". He notes that later records of the Parliament mention adjournments to Tavistock and suggests that a nearby "Tinners' Hall" - now lost - may have been where they actually conducted their business.[3]
Folklore
Crockern Tor is said to be the home of the mythical Old Crockern, variously described as a spectral figure on horseback, galloping across the moor on a skeleton horse with his phantom hounds which were stabled at nearby Wistman's Wood; or as a local god of the moor in pre-Christian times:[4]
| “ | the gurt old sperit of the moors, Old Crockern himself, grey as granite, and his eyebrows hanging down over his glimmering eyes like sedge, and his eyes as deep as peat water pools. | ” |
—Sabine Baring-Gould A Book of the West, 1899[5] | ||
References
- ↑ H. P. R. Finberg (1950). "An Unrecorded Stannary Parliament". Rep. Trans. Devon. Ass. Advmt Sci. 82: 296
- ↑ Possibly Robert Rolle
- ↑ St Leger-Gordon, Douglas Francis (1970). Portrait of Devon (third ed.). London: Robert Hale & Company. pp. 130–131. ISBN 0-7091-1858-9.
- ↑ "Old Crockern". www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk. http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/old_crockern.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-23.
- ↑ Quoted in Hemery, 1983.
- Jane Marchand (1995). "A High Rock called Crockern Torr". Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society 53: 1–10
- Eric Hemery (1983). High Dartmoor. London: Robert Hale. pp. 427–433. ISBN 0-7091-8859-5.