Arthur Conan Doyle - Palimpsest Dartmoor

Palimpsest
Dartmoor

Despite being a vast and
inhospitable terrain,
Dartmoor is principally man-made.

Dartmoor began some 290 million years ago as a magma bubble in the Earth’s crust that forced its way to the surface and popped. Eventually the volcanic activity subsided leaving a large mass of granite in the middle of what would become Southwest England. Flash forward to just 7000 years ago and the first prehistoric people began to colonize the landscape.

These earliest settlers in South Devon were hunter-gatherers and the landscape looked significantly different than today’s incarnation: the National Forest actually consisted at that time of forests, including oak, hazel, alder, willow, and birch. The Agricultural Revolution changed everything for Dartmoor’s people and topography. As with other parts of the globe, the introduction of farming allowed a sedentary existence, which further resulted in better health, longer life, and denser communities. Early farmers cleared away wooded areas to acquire more land to farm. Consequently, their immobile lifestyle also meant that deforestation for firewood, shelters, and tools would also impact specific tree populations more directly. Proof of these effects has been discovered in layers of peat, which show a major shift in pollen deposition from trees toward cereals and other produce.

Aside from a few flint shards and the testimony of peat, nothing remains of these Stone Age settlers. However, the environmental repercussions appear even today. The Bronze Age boasts the strongest presence in the pantheon of Dartmoor ruins. Stone rows and circles remain alongside huts, enclosures, and cairns. During this period skilled laborers worked with metal and clay; the moor had several thriving industries.

With the Iron Age came a period of decline for life on the moor. The weather grew colder for a time and farmers moved down off the slopes onto the fringes of the moor. Livestock continued to graze on the moor, but the farmers only ventured in pursuit of their keep during the summer. This lull of activity continued up through the Medieval Period, when farmsteads once more began to appear on the moor. Edward III granted large tracts of land to several of his loyal subjects, and these estates became what are now called the Ancient Tenements. At this time, tin-mining also grew into a major industry for the Southwest, and Dartmoor competed with nearby Cornwall for influence.

Mining continued in the region through the late nineteenth century, when the mineral beds lay nearly exhausted and all but two of the Teign Valley mines closed down. Within that same time the military took over portions of the land for training purposes; minor acquisitions during the Napoleonic Wars grew in scope during the Crimean War, and a large portion of the north-western quadrant remains an artillery range to this day. Workers on the moor switched from mining to quarrying from the turn of the century and through most of the twentieth century.

Moorland tree or hat rack?

Nowadays, all of the marks of humanity’s interactions with the moor lay side by side, etched on her surface. An endless wave of rushes and bracken fill in the ecological gaps left by prehistoric man, and these butt up against patches of the moor reforested by farmers in recent decades. Stone circles and huts have eroded into mere topographical features and the regional folklore has absorbed them into the grab-bag of cultural and historical obscurities. Former mines and quarries have also incorporated into the landscape; the National Park Authority actually oversees many sites deemed significant to industrial history. Homeowners and business-owners operate out of the same tenements that came into existence nearly seven hundred years ago.

While Dartmoor evokes a sense of the untamed wilderness to many a traveler, the landscape actually seems much more an invention of human toil. Sandy Gerrard compares the continual redefining of the countryside and its people to a palimpsest, a piece of parchment recycled by each new set of scribes, scripts written over older half-legible hands. Not only might one find the coexistence of structures, but of ideas; folklore and custom trickle down with time and fill the cracks in dry stone walls.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s reshaping of the lore and landscape for Hound of the Baskervilles only adds another layer of discourse over millennia already present. Further I suggest that the experience of a landscape must simultaneously redefine it, as a new perception colors in between the lines. Consequently, taking up the investigation of a place for ourselves can only enhance our relationship with the narrative in question. The literary tourist extends his relationship with literature by ascending to co-authorship.