Cornwood

Cornwood lies on the southern edge of the moor where the Yealm and the Erme come down off the high ground, a village of granite and slate around a church, with the open moor beginning almost at once behind it. It is a farming parish that has also known industry, with china clay worked nearby and the granite of the southern moor quarried and carried down the valleys.

For walkers, Cornwood is one of the best ways onto the southern moor, which is the emptiest part of Dartmoor and the least understood. From the village, tracks climb past Hanger Down onto ground scattered with stone rows, cairns and the long abandoned workings of the tinners, and the Erme valley leads up to the extraordinary Erme stone row, the longest prehistoric stone row in the world. Very few people go there, which is part of the point.