Welcome to Dartmoor Magazine!

This job is never dull. I’ve just spent a bright and sunny (but very chilly) couple of hours at Powdermills watching Mike Nendick and Kerenza Townsend from DNPA filming outside with potter Joss Hibbs, who is working on a replica Trevisker ware pot in connection with DNPA and Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum’s joint ‘Going for Bronze’ exhibition (see News from the National Park). The accompanying photo shows the necessary lengths taken to achieve a clear recording of Joss’s description of how to produce an authentic clay for the pot, notwithstanding noisy interference from the breeze, the oil delivery lorry, scuffling grasses and Ben, Joss’s collie! There’ll be more on this whole episode in the autumn issue.

And on arriving home I’ve been spurred into action as a result of the news that the nine recumbent stones identified on Cut Hill in 2004 have been dated to around 3500BC, hundreds of years older than Stonehenge (see In the News). Next I’m going to watch Chris Chapman’s new DVD on bovine TB, much of which was filmed on Dartmoor. Not bad for a morning’s work!

This issue introduces a new ‘Mystery Photographs’ feature from the Dartmoor Archive. We plan to print a number of photographs in each issue from now on, in the hope that a reader might have some information on people or places to augment the Archive’s records. Tim Jenkinson writes about the results of his researches into Venford Reservoir’s boundary stones, and Jan Palmer reports on the work of Lt Col Tony Clark and the Dartmoor Military Conservation Group. Professor Ian Mercer celebrates 25 years of the Commoners’ Council, and explains just what being a Dartmoor Commoner means. And in celebration of summer Peter Harlow looks at the history of Belstone Cricket Club, said to be the highest in the country.

I think we’ve got more In the News items and Dairy dates than ever before in this issue. Although I have to ferret out a lot of this information an increasing number of people are sending me news and dates, for which I am extremely grateful. I’m anxious to get a good spread of news from across the moor, so am always delighted to hear from new sources.

Here’s to a lovely summer on Dartmoor.