Ilsington

Ilsington stands on the south eastern edge of the moor between Haytor and the Bovey valley, a village of granite around the church of St Michael, with its fifteenth century church house beside the churchyard. It is a large old parish that reaches from the lowland fields up onto the open moor, and it has known farming, quarrying and mining in its time.

The village is a quieter alternative to the busier places around Haytor, and the country between is excellent walking: Rippon Tor and Haytor Down above, the wooded Bovey valley below, and the remains of the granite and iron industries scattered across the ground between. The playwright John Ford, one of the notable dramatists of the early seventeenth century, was born in the parish, a connection the village has never made much fuss about.