Alone in Dartmoor’s haunted woods

Wistman’s Wood is one of the UK’s last remaining temperate rainforests. It came within Prince William’s purview after he inherited the Duchy of Cornwall, the largest privately owned portion of Dartmoor National Park. He has since visited the site, a seven-acre strip of oak woodland on the eastern slopes of the West Dart Valley, posing for photos in a waxed jacket and tweed cap.

Wistman’s is a unique habitat. It has a number of rare mosses and lichens which attach themselves to and around its stunted, gnarly oaks and the large boulders dotted among them. But it is as much its place in folklore as natural history that makes Wistman’s so important.

The woods have long been associated with druids. Two centuries ago, a local writer and amateur historian Eliza Bray claimed that ancient Celtic rites and human sacrifices had taken place in the wood.