Wallabrook Clapper Bridge

• Grid reference: SX 6535 8712
• Listed building: Grade II, Historic England list entry 1106162 (first listed 16 September 1987)
• Parish: Gidleigh, West Devon

Wallabrook Clapper Bridge crosses the Walla Brook on Gidleigh Common, just before the brook joins the North Teign River. A single large, irregularly shaped slab of undressed granite spans the stream, resting on abutments of big granite slabs. It is a footbridge, listed Grade II, and the list entry dates it to the 18th or 19th century.

Dartmoor has several streams called Walla Brook. This one rises beneath Wild Tor, where it is also known locally as the Headon River. It is not the Walla Brook near Warren House Inn that runs into the East Dart. The name goes back to the 1240 perambulation of the Forest, which has it as Wotesbrokelakesfote; the Place-Name Society reads the first part as a personal name.

The Thorough Guide to South Devon and South Cornwall picks the bridge out as a noticeable single-slab bridge near the brook's junction with the North Teign. Late 19th-century artists painted it, and postcard publishers including Judge's, Chapman's, Frith's and Valentine's issued cards of it. Photographs from about the 1950s show two trees beside the bridge; by the 1990s only one was left.

It stands about a mile from the nearest car park near Scorhill, an easy walk down from Scorhill Stone Circle, with the Tolmen Stone and Teign-e-ver Clapper Bridge close by.

Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography: walkers on Wallabrook Clapper Bridge with Paul Rendell.