A collection of walks, discoveries, insights and pictures of exploring Dartmoor National Park
August 26, 2020
PRINCETOWN
Nigel Machin and Steve Grigg
View from Plume of Feathers looking across the road towards Duchy Hotel / Visitors Centre showing the traffic used to go round a signpost in the centre. This is from about 1960. Matching it up it looks like it was close to where the modern lampost is in the pavement today. And, of course, fences and cattle-grids tend to discourage the ponies from visiting these days.View looking up Tavistock Road from outside the Prince of Wales. The small low building on left and the building next to it have been demolished and are now the car park of the Duchy Bed & Breakfast. The larger building was Bolt’s top shop and the smaller building was a newsagents – W.H. Smith (credit: Brenda Cooper). The larger building was aslo at some time the co-operative building.Another view up Tavistock Road from outside the the Duchy Hotel / Visitors Centre. Less ponies in 2020 compared with 1950s / 1960sDuchy Hotel, now the Visitors Centre. The top picture is from 1st August 1909 and shows the Dart Vale HarriersPlume of Feathers, built in 1785. I can just about remember the small gift shop at the front / left of the building.The Devils Elbow Pub (was Railway Hotel) then became the Railway Tavern. It closed as a pub in 2009 and became accommodation for the Plume of FeathersPrevious incarnation as Railway Hotel. It was built in 1827 and originally was the northern terminus for the Plymouth & Dartmoor Granite Railway. It was first used as a workshop and stables (Stable Bar) for said railway. It was abandoned from railway use before 1877, when the G.W.R. built their branch line which terminated some quarter of a mile away. The pub was first known as The Railway Inn, up to 1954.Another view of time when the pub was the Devil’s Elbow.The Duchy Hotel c1900, before alterations which were undertaken in 1908-9Left end of the High Moorland Centre from September 2020, superimposed onto the Duchy Hotel. Originally the building was used to house the officers from the Napoleonic prison militia. Right end of the High Moorland Centre from September 2020, superimposed onto the Duchy Hotel. The first landlord was William Stocker in 1810.The High Moorland Centre in September 2020. It has been used as a Prison Officers mess previously.
