Legendary in name because so many Dartmoor Rescue call-outs were co-ordinated from out this way, but to me Nun's Cross Farm was exactly that, just a name that Bookhound would shout out as he flew out of the door. Interestingly we have been wondering how the whole moorland search and rescue effort might have changed since those seemingly primitive pre-mobile phone and GPS days. Apart from plenty of places where there is no phone signal, navigation may certainly have changed for many.
Us, still on good old-fashioned map and compass.
So when December 1st dawned glorious (yes, still catching up on 2014) and it looked set to stay that way, Nun's Cross was top of my list for a High Dartmoor walk.
Not only that but I had carted yet another hefty tome back from the library, Wild Goose and Riddon - The Dartmoor Photographs of Chris Chapman.
We know Chris Chapman's pictures well because we spend far more time than can be good for us drinking coffee (or in my case pots of hot chocolate) or having lunch in the Bedford Hotel, and the walls are adorned with these atmospheric black and white shots of Dartmoor, both the landscape and the people. We have been known to sit 'neath that dead pig and tuck into sausages There are even people we know in the photographs, which must mean we have lived here a long time too, but one of the pictures in the book is of Syward's Cross and with a lovely story attached.
Out in the snow with James Ravilious and cameras, Chris Chapman and James managed to drive out on the Whiteworks road beyond Princetown and walk down to Syward's Cross...
Bookhound and I talked about how much we missed being able to get up onto the Moors in snow now that we don't have four-wheel drive. We decided that this winter we must just hi-jack the Gamekeeper's Land Rover and get out there. I can only begin to imagine how beautiful this bit must have looked because even on our non-snowy visit there is nothing disappointing at all about this bleak moorland with its views down to Plymouth Sound ..
As the two intrepid photographers were fiddling with cameras, and waiting for the best light to show the ice and snow clinging to the cross to its best effect, a figure appeared over the horizon. Making conversation, as you would, the elderly gentleman was most interested in what the two were doing, absent-mindedly tapped the cross with his stick and all the ice and snow slid off. Moment gone but not before Chris Chapman had managed a couple of shots, thank goodness...
Look carefully and you can see that figure walking over the brow of the hill, and yes, all attempts at sticking the snow back on the cross failed...what you see is what there was.
On our visit Syward's Cross was looking like this...
Earliest references to the existence of the cross, as Crucem Siwardi, date back to 1240, astonishing.
Nearby is Nun's Cross Farm...
How about this for a Des Res??
The site was spotted back in 1870 by one John Hooper who saw the potential for a moorland small-holding, leased the land from the Duchy and proceeded to build a house for his wife. Mrs Hooper moved in in 1871 and helped build all the walls for the newtakes (moorland that is 'newly taken' for fields).
As Eric Hemery suggests in my bible, High Dartmoor, even by pioneering standards it can't have been comfortable, but children were born and raised there and the family seem to have survived somehow, several living well into their nineties, heaven knows how though. This really is miles from civilisation, and though I can look at it with a romantic eye, one night would probably be plenty...
Perilously close to deriliction when the late Eric Hemery wrote about Nun's Cross Farm in the 1980s, he would be pleased to see it now, renovated, sound of roof, sleeps thirty-six, a bunk-house well-used by outdoor adventure groups who probably relish the unchanged lack of electricity or running water bar that from the nearby leat.
I love this side of the moor, bleak and unforgiving in harsh weather, but magical and endless otherwise... and hardly crowded, not a soul to be seen, but probably plenty of souls we couldn't see...
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