Philip Marsden

Bogs and fogs

There have been conflicting plans for this wilderness, going back to the 18th century, as Matthew Kelly’s Quartz and Feldspar reveals

issue 13 June 2015

In his poem ‘Eden Rock’, Charles Causley conjures up a dreamy memory of a childhood picnic ‘somewhere beyond Eden Rock’. He reported later: ‘Somebody asked me the other day where Eden Rock is —I mean I have no idea, I made it up! “Dartmoor,” I said — that’s always a safe answer.’

As southern England’s largest expanse of unenclosed land, Dartmoor has always been a good place to lose things: dangerous prisoners, children on their Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards, military manoeuvres. It has also swallowed up voluminous amounts of parliamentary time, ministerial reports, public enquiries and arcane legislation — all of which centres on one simple question: what’s it for?

Matthew Kelly’s Quartz and Feldspar charts the response to this question from the late 18th century to the present day. If you live around the moor or are a frequent user of the A30, you will remember with a faint nostalgia the queues through Okehampton (dubbed the ‘capital of the Devonshire Highlands’) and the 20 years of highly principled discussion about whether or not the integrity of Dartmoor National Park should be compromised by the building of a bypass (it was).

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