Crockern Tor is a tor in Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor is an area of moorland in south Devon, England. Protected by National Park status, it covers .The granite upland dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. The moorland is capped with many exposed granite hilltops known as tors, providing habitats for Dartmoor wildlife. The...

 National Park

National park

A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...

, Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, England

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Composed of two large outcrops of rock, it is 396 metres above sea level. The lower outcrop was the open-air meeting place of the Devonshire Stannary Parliament from the early 14th century until the first half of the 18th century. On Parliament Rock, pictured here, the Lord Warden of the Great Court of the Devon Tinners supposedly sat during meetings of the Court.

Descriptions

The tor was one of only three features on Dartmoor that Tristram Risdon

Tristram Risdon

Tristram Risdon was an English antiquary and topographer, and the author of Survey of the County of Devon. He was able to devote most of his life to writing this work. After he completed it in about 1632 it circulated around interested people in several manuscript copies for almost 80 years before...

 considered important enough to include in his Survey of Devon which was compiled in the early 17th century. In it he said that "Crockern Torr" had "a table and seats of moorstone [granite], hewn out of the rocks, lying in the force of all weather, no house or refuge being near it". The tor was also one of the few historic features to appear on Benjamin Donn's one inch to the mile map of Devon of 1765. It lies adjacent to the trans-Dartmoor packhorse track, so was a significant landmark for travellers since time immemorial.

Stannary court

The tor was the hub of the four Dartmoor stannary

Stannary

The word stannary is historically applied to:*A tin mine, especially in Cornwall or Devon, South West England*A region containing tin works *A chartered entity comprising such a region, its works, and its workers...

 areas – Ashburton

Ashburton, Devon

Ashburton is a small town on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, adjacent to the A38 Devon Expressway.It was formerly important as a stannary town , and remains the largest town within the National Park, with a population of around 3,500...

, Chagford

Chagford

Chagford is a small town and civil parish on the north-east edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, England, close to the River Teign. It is located off the A382, about 4 miles west of Moretonhampstead. The name Chagford is derived from the word chag, meaning gorse or broom, and the ford suffix indicates its...

, Tavistock and Plympton

Plympton

Plympton, or Plympton Maurice or Plympton St Maurice or Plympton St Mary or Plympton Erle, in south-western Devon, England is an ancient stannary town: an important trading centre in the past for locally mined tin, and a former seaport...

 – whose boundaries radiate outwards from it. The Stannary Court was convoked here when deemed necessary, at irregular intervals, by the Lord Warden who summoned 24 representatives or "jurates" from each of the four stannaries. Each meeting probably continued for several days and dealt with matters such as setting stannary law, registering tinworks and mills, hearing petitions and imposing penalties on those guilty of breaking the stannary laws.

There is evidence for ten assemblies at Crockern Tor: in 1494, 1510, 1532, 1533, 1552, 1567, 1574, 1600, 1688 and 1703. The earliest documented meeting on 1 September 1494 had Sir John Stepcote, vice-warden of the Devon Stannaries, as chairman. Sir Walter Raleigh

Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....

 was Lord Warden of the Stannaries for many years, and it is recorded that he presided at one Court at Crockern Tor, on 27 October 1600. The last meeting for which records survive was on 23 September 1703 where the Warden, John Granville, 1st Baron Granville and the Vice-Warden, the Honourable Samuel Rolle, opened the court at 8 a.m. The last court was said to have been held in or around 1745, but no documentation exists, and considering that the tin industry on Dartmoor had by then declined greatly, it could have been only a small affair.

Patchy and conflicting evidence indicates that compared to the bare nature of the site today, there were chairs, seats, a table and a shelter, all made of granite, which were used when the court met. These items were supposedly taken away or broken up in the late 18th century, possibly used as a source of stone for the buildings that started to appear on the moor after the roads were improved. On the other hand Douglas St Leger-Gordon, the noted writer on Devon history, casts doubt on the existence of any substantial meetings at this "singularly unsuitable" place in his 1963 book, Portrait of Devon. He points out that any proceedings must have been frequently disrupted by the wind carrying away someone's hat, or "scattering the minutes of the last meeting insecurely held in the warden's numbed fingers". He notes that later records of the Parliament mention adjournments to Tavistock and suggests that a nearby "Tinners' Hall" - now lost - may have been where they actually conducted their business.

Folklore

Crockern Tor is said to be the home of the mythical Old Crockern, variously described as a spectral figure on horseback, galloping across the moor

Wild Hunt

The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal, spectral group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground,...

 on a skeleton horse with his phantom hounds which were stabled at nearby Wistman's Wood

Wistman's Wood

Wistman's Wood is one of three remote copses of stunted oaks on Dartmoor, Devon, England. It lies at an altitude of between 380–420 metres in the valley of the West Dart River near Two Bridges, at grid reference SX613770....

; or as a local god of the moor in pre-Christian times: