Buckland Monachorum

This being a place we visited in the course of our visit to Dousland last week, home to the Drake Manor Inn, one the relatively few public houses offering outdoor dining prior to the Big Bang of Monday just past. The sequence of events on this visit now a bit muddled, despite consultation with BH, so what follows is offered on a best endeavours basis.

With the first leg being across the moor to Dousland. Some showers, plenty of sheep with lambs, plenty of ponies with foals and one alpaca. Plenty of gorse in flower. Some signs of heath fires past. A festival of cones along the road outside the Two Bridges Hotel, not open on this day but presumably busy at the weekend, busy enough for their large car park not to be large enough.

Detour to the baker at Horrabridge, already noticed at reference 3.

Arrived at Dousland to collect BH's brother. To continue to wonder why the CQC sees fit to be closing this particular place down. To wonder whether it helps for the CQC to be independent of both care providers and the social service departments of local authorities. Easy for them to throw their weight around - but they don't have to make provision with inadequate funds. To wonder whether their aspirations on behalf of people who are both severely handicapped and elderly are realistic or sensible.

On through a regular lane to Walkhampton, then through a back lane to the church which is a mile outside the village. A lane in which it would have been inconvenient to say the least had we met anything coming the other way, which we did not. A church which comes complete with a church house which I learn from reference 2 has served various parochial functions over the years, including provision of after-church refreshments. Perhaps needed because the church was a mile up the road for most of the people who used it. Presumably the need for one's church to be a very visible landmark had trumped the needs of its parishioners. But a quite and decent place to be buried, with fine views over the surrounding countryside.

As luck would have, we got a close view of the same brown seed heads which had puzzled us the day before outside Holne.

The refurbished cross outside the church house, possibly a way-marker for the pious souls who once walked back and forth between the abbeys of Buckfast and Tavistock. Perhaps the slightly less pious, stay-at-homes were expected to provide subsistence & refreshments along the way. See reference 2.

Next stop the butcher at Yelverton, already noticed at reference 4. Where the chemist pressed a self testing kit on BH. A kit which contained seven tests and was made in China. With them being given out in this way, we wondered how many thousands of them - maybe millions of them - got wasted. I associate to the various National Health people over the years who have told me that they thought it a pity that some services did not carry a more or less nominal charge: not enough to hurt, but enough to make people remember that services had to be paid for and were better not wasted. In any event, this kit served to show us how these tests worked, against having to do one for real a couple of days later.

Then across the common, through the unfortunately named Crapstone, to the curiously named Buckland Monachorum, home to Drake Manor Inn, with the pirate known as Sir Francis Drake having bought his country residence a few miles up the road. Although old habits died hard, and he actually died, rather ingloriously, in Puerto Rico, in the course of trying to do a bit of armed robbery - then a felony, so presumably punishable by hanging, had he been caught doing it back at home. Back in the present, having inspected the garden arrangements at the back, we settled for the better sheltered smoking tent in the parking bay opposite,  not present when the Street View van was last in the vicinity.

View from the den above. I took chicken pie from the young ladies attending, which turned out to be an individual pie, possibly made up on the premises, during the slack winter just past. Pastry good and plenty of chicken - but not much else. I like a bit of white goo, perhaps containing a bit of chopped ham, the odd mushroom. But taken with chips and peas, substantial. It filled me up. Taken also with small bottles of coastal water (whatever that might be) sporting the RNLI logo.

The village stream was next to the pub, complete with very substantial steps, suggesting that they had served as the village launderette in times gone by. Or perhaps just the place where the villagers got their water from, trusting to the Lord for its cleanliness.

Evidence of the bounty of Lady Modyford (aka Lady Modiford), the daughter of a royalist killed during the Civil War, but who married well and went on to prosper after the Restoration. Maybe she paid for the steps as well? For all of which see reference 5, sadly agnostic on this last point.

And by the time we finished that lot, more or less time for home.

Reference 1: http://drakemanorinn.co.uk/. The public house.

Reference 2: http://www.dartmoor-crosses.org.uk/walkhampton.htm. The cross.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/cakes.html. The baker gets a mention.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/heritage-junk-food-record.html. The butcher gets more than a mention.

Reference 5: http://www.westdartmoor.org.uk/schools/lady-modifords/.