The Mysteries Of The Old Lych Way | Ancient Tracks | Odyssey

[Music] [Music] britain is crisscrossed by an amazing network of ancient trackways these remarkable routes are our oldest roads and have been travelled for more than 5 000 years he's quite small isn't he he's small but he's mighty small but mighty i like that walked by pilgrims and traders hunters and invaders celts and romans saxons and vikings each track is bound up in myth mystery and legend of all the archaeological finds i've come across when i heard about it my jaw actually dropped [Music] i'm on a quest to connect the clues and rediscover the stories hidden among britain's ancient pathways i want to find out what it is that tempts today's travelers to go back in time and rediscover these mystic tracks [Music] do you reckon that's the north star not the brightest star in the sky but it's probably one of the most useful it's a bit like me smell a leather you can still smell it 1900 year old leather isn't that absolutely amazing this week i've come to dartmoor in devon to walk the ancient routes that connect christianity and paganism through centuries-old stories of sacred sites extraordinary stones and literature's most notorious hound [Music] these are the paths our ancestors once followed the ancient tracks that we in britain can still walk today dartmoor has been described as england's last great wilderness it covers an area of some 370 square miles mankind has lived on dartmoor since the stone age and over time has left an indelible mark on this exposed landscape i've been to dartmoor loads of times and whenever i come i hear some new weird and wonderful story about the place that really raises the hairs on the back of my neck but i've never walked across the hole more i don't really know how the whole thing fits together i do know that this is going to be a journey through time i'm going to hear lots of tales from different periods and i've brought my own timepiece with me as my companion although exactly why you won't know till the end of the program [Music] across dartmoor is a network of ancient trackways shrouded in history and mystery i'll be following a procession of medieval stone crosses along the abbot's way before heading in search of consecrated ground along the old lich way a way of the dead along my journey i'll retrace the footsteps of britain's greatest detective plunge the depths of a bottomless lake and come face to face with a fantastical array of four-legged beasts [Music] and with a little detective work of my own i hope to unravel the time-warned secrets that remain deep rooted in this vast untamed terrain [Music] my journey begins at buckfast abbey on the edge of dartmoor for many centuries people have been drawn to this sacred site in search of the divine buckfast abby was mentioned in the 11th century doomsday book and in 2018 will be 1 000 years old its fortunes have ebbed and flowed through the years from wielding great power over medieval pagan societies to its devastating 16th century demise after henry viii's dissolution of the monasteries then in 1852 french monks who had been exiled from their own monastery came here to what was then a deserted ruined and flattened ancient monastic science and after a lot of hard work and inspiration they created this moreland sanctuary for these 19th century monks re-cultivating this abandoned land was essential and today's monks are equally self-sustaining religion it seems has prospered here by harnessing the natural world [Music] spiritually replenished the abbott has offered to show me the first of the crosses that will guide me across the wilderness ahead is this the original position of this cruise no no no no it was brought from south brent so what was the significance of putting it right here well because traditionally the abbott's way starts at buckfast and goes on to across the moor to tavistock and so this is really this a starting point so this has become the first marker stage it's become the first marker stone yes yes oh well if you don't hear from me in a week we'll send the dartmouth rescue after you it's all right all right tony bye god bless bye-bye and as well as the abbott's good wishes i have another guide to enlighten my journey there's a little boat from about 1935 which gives a really nice picture of what it would have been like traveling along this road it's called the abbott's way it was priced at sixpence and it says for several hundred years this thoroughfare witnessed colorful pageantry of medieval life it goes on to lament that fragments alone remain today it's a funny word that fragments isn't it but it's true nowadays all you get are these tiny little hints of what life would have been like here and it's up to us to use our detective work to pull them back together it is really rather bizarre walking down a trackway in the 21st century and coming across a bloke singing a medieval song yeah no this is something i do a lot i think it's a great way of connecting with the land i mean we're in a land where well this is called the abbott's way now and monks and abbots would have walked it in the past and we know that it existed a thousand years ago and this song i'm singing is the oldest song we know of written with with with the music and the words so we can be pretty sure that some monks would have sung this song maybe even on this path should we walk away together yeah do we know much about the actual bloke who wrote that song you were singing it's called godric of finchael finchale yeah it's a part of northumberland [Music] with my pilgrim for company i follow the abbott's way to where it splits into two one going to buckland abbey and the other to tavistock and it's at this junction where i find the largest and oldest of dartmoor stone crosses do we know what this cross is well it's called nuns cross or siwards cross and we definitely know that it was here in 1240 because king henry iii sent 12 of his knights to perambulate the dartmoor boundaries and we know they visited this cross this is real history isn't it it is as is the song i sung earlier which is we know will have been definitely sung at the time this cross was around because that was written in 1160 just before this we have recorded this cross so it's a great joy to be able to sing it here and connect the two yeah you serenade it and i'll head off up the hill [Music] [Applause] [Music] more my singing pilgrim makes me think of the first of dartmoor's many cautionary folk tales as the moor rises gently to a high ridge i'm climbing one of three hills here this one known as piper's hill [Music] way over there can you see that mound of stones that's on top of the second one and the third one is that little one there with the tree there and these mounds are supposed to be pipers who are frozen for all eternity as a punishment and what did they do wrong they played their musical instruments on the sabbath and that is a typical dartmoor story that conjunction of the pagan and christianity i wonder what the the very first version of that story was if only these stones could talk or pipe i should probably say every step i make now across this magnificently bleak and stony expanse takes me back in time back way beyond the struggle between church and paganism and back into another glorious dartmoor mystery i've got something for you here look slap bang in the middle of a deserted more you've got this great name the drizzle bone it's four meters tall it's about six tons in weight and really it kind of asks you more questions than it gives answers doesn't it what period is it well it's surrounded by prehistoric stuff so presumably it's late neolithic early bronze age it's got this big knobbly thing at the top of it which presumably gives it its name but most importantly what's it for is it some kind of way marker is it the place where people met like at a fair or something or is it like stonehenge part of some enormous prehistoric clock which reminds me time to move on these ancient places are a wonderful spark for the traveler's imagination each one a piece in dartmoor's grand complex jigsaw puzzle bidding the bone goodbye and with barely another soul in sight the mind tends to drift off to stories of the supernatural and of dare i say it apparitions and there's one particular apparition that crops up all over the high moorland of devon and cornwall the pixie in the old days if a traveler lost their way and got really confused they were sometimes referred to as being pixie lead but i'm a seasoned traveler i know how to handle pixies by using a very ancient trick if i put my coat on inside out it'll so confuse them that it'll keep them off my back and i'll be able to stick to the right track [Applause] every year the nearby town of ottery saint mary is invaded by hordes of local children dressed as impish elves to mark pixie day [Music] legend has it these pixels were caught trying to silence the town's church bells and banished to a nearby cave i think these pixies are a force to be reckoned with i'd better find their cave and pay my respects [Music] oh yeah there it is look you see in there now i'm told that if i want to ensure that i get down safe then i have to leave some silver here's two half grounds cool two and six five bob that should keep me safe on the journey back down again shouldn't it [Music] pixies and the paranormal held a particular fascination for the creator of sherlock holmes sir arthur conan doyle the legendary writer was taken in by phony photographs of fairies believing these celestial creatures to be real but lurking on the moor ready to inspire conan doyle's most famous novel was the legend of a very different apparition not as charming as those pixies though because here on dartmoor this became the inspiration for the most spine tingling tale in the whole of detective fiction sherlock holmes and the hound of the baskervilles the ancient abbott's way across dartmoor is a landscape steeped in centuries-old myths and legends and a location that inspired one of our most iconic literary masterpieces the hound of the baskervilles sir arthur conan doyle's love letter to dartmoor and all its mysteries they reckon that when he came here in 1901 to recce the place he used to walk up to 18 miles a day in order to find suitable locations for his terrible tale the plot of this complex murder mystery attributes the sudden death of the wealthy sir charles baskerville to a family curse involving a supernatural hound dartmoor had provided the inspiration cast and backdrop for this beastly apparition and the hound of the baskervilles also marks the resurrection of the legendary detective sherlock holmes conan doyle had killed off homes eight years earlier but the celebrated sleuth simply couldn't be left out of such a ripping yarn the inspiration for the hound of the baskerville's most blood-curdling scene is just a short walk off the abbott's way in dartmoor's most dangerous bog [Music] sherlock holmes himself said that dartmouth would be the perfect setting if the devil ever did really want to get his hands on the affairs of men and there's this wonderful bit at the end of the book where the arch villain john stapleton is actually killed by the the bog in the center of dartmoor it says somewhere in the heart of the great grimpen mire that's actually here down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried right down there for pilgrim travellers straying from the safety of the path and onto this wild untamed bog was fraught with danger just as deviating from the christian to the occult was seen by many as a step too far but remarkably it was this very path that conan doyle himself chose to travel i'm intrigued to find why the writer was so fascinated with victorian spiritualism it's so bizarre isn't it on one hand you've got this kind of man who invents fictional csi and yet on the other hand he was prepared to countenance stuff which nowadays we would think of as weird and a bit daft it does seem like a contradiction to us now and i think we very much parcel these apart but in the 19th century believers thought that they had discovered a scientific religion and he said i believe it because i've seen it if i have to go back to believing in things that i haven't seen i might as well go back to the old religions can i talk on this subject i'm not talking about what i believe i'm not talking about what i think i'm talking about what i know and talking about things that i've handled i've seen what i've heard of my own ears it's kind of crude empiricism right they thought that they were rejecting the old ideas that you had to believe on the basis of faith and now you could sit at your kitchen table and you could experiment you could rap you could be with a medium and you knew that there was an afterlife because you could see and touch and talk to the dead is there anything in the hound of the baskervilles that reflects his belief in spiritualism well that's quite spiritual a story in many ways the hound of baskerville's is very very clearly an attack on this old-fashioned idea of hell charlotte holmes jokes about in this investigation he might be up against the devil what the story does it disproves the existence of um the supernatural hellish beast but it opens the door for other more modern understandings of supernatural phenomena it is odd isn't it that he should set this story in the theater of dartmoor which on one hand seems to me almost to epitomize the very early christian religion and yet on the other hand it keeps spinning off into weird and pagan beliefs almost everywhere you look yeah yeah this place where the primitive is always with us it's important i think that you get a sense that the the ancient beliefs of the neolithic people maybe are not too dissimilar from the spirit beliefs that he's arguing for elsewhere whatever conan doyle's obsessions the hound of the baskervilles is a wonderfully potent story so potent in fact i feel the creature's brooding presence everywhere i look [Music] wait a minute and here he comes thundering towards me it's the hound of the baskervilles aren't you gorgeous no not gorgeous absolutely terrifying have one of these that's it the lovely hound of the baskervilles come on come and show yourself let's have a look at you look at sleepy that oh and very slobbery too the slobbery end of the basket [Music] i promised you four-legged creatures on my wander through this formidable terrain but none say dart more more than these iconic ponies running untethered across the moors i truly feel i'm intruding on their turf a visitor on their land but what i want to know is how far back these beautiful creatures have adorned the wild dartmoor landscape well not all the animals on dartmoor are quite as threatening as the hound of the baskervilles are they well um not all except george when he's hungry these are dartmoor ponies and they're renowned for their fantastic temperament being children's riding ponies but um of course they have a long history connected to dartmoor i suppose in the old days they would have been working horses wouldn't they yeah i mean if you go right the way back through history they were used in tin mining you know this is the the old-fashioned quad bike isn't it yeah you know this is this is the proper quad bike she so wants to walk on but there is one question that i want to ask don't be impatient before we go which is do we know that there were little ponies on dartmoor a long time ago like in the bronze age well we do isn't that amazing pre-history and we have proof because in the 1970s there was a archaeological dig uh carried out on shore more on the other side of dartmoor and from siege samples that were taken they actually found some hoof prints and they were similar size to a dartmoor pony's feet so yes we had cattle sheep and ponies on dartmoor three and a half thousand years ago we've got the answer to the question now do you want to walk on come on in [Music] back on the abbott's way to sheeps to church and i'm keeping my ears peeled for a group of bell ringers who can help me figure out the baffling tale of nearby crazy whale pool you see dartmoor has no natural lakes so i think getting to the bottom of this aquatic conundrum might not be as easy as it seems [Music] hello peter good morning good morning how long have you been associated with the bells in this church oh 70 years and were you the first of your family no father and grandfather both rung in this church so what's the link between the bells and the pool there's a lot of history and maybe some legend attached to crazy whirlpool parishioners wanted to know what depth it was grandfather said they had six bell ropes from this store to try and measure the depth but it ended in failure so it was even deeper than six ropes tied together yes it is mysterious isn't it there's a lot of mystery attached to it [Music] the sight of this bottomless dark water lagoon is marked by its namesake crazy whale cross this lake is so well hidden that when it's approached from the open heath it only reveals itself at the last moment [Music] there it is imagine a long bell rope dropping into that at 100 feet 200 feet 300 feet they still haven't got to the bottom 360. they've run out of rope and still it goes down and down infinitely deep the water board say it's a tudor tin mine and it's actually 16 feet deep the locals say that's rubbish the water board never measured it or if they did they didn't do their job properly but what it proves indisputably is that in a landscape like this you can believe anything you like even things which aren't possible at least not in the material world [Music] the hounds the pixies the occult leanings of conan doyle i've certainly encountered more than my fair share of dartmoor superstitions but even greater mysteries lie along the abbott's way up ahead i'll become spellbound by an ancient witch and find out who won the battle between a vicar and a savage beast dartmoor a land of sweeping views and enduring legends and as i follow the primitive tracks across this epic landscape i'm continually drawn back in time by exhilarating vistas that fuel the imagination then suddenly appearing like a mirage i'm halted by the sight of something actually very real somewhere where serving time comes with the territory surrounded by unrelenting wilderness you could call it britain's alcatraz and i for one am more than happy to keep my distance [Music] there's not much doubt what that is is the dartmoor the most infamous prison in the whole of britain imagine even if you managed to get over those perimeter fences what would you see in front of your freedom no just mile after mile of bog land wherever you went you would be able to be seen not much chance of escape no wonder today that single word dartmoor is still the epitome of gloom and terror for dartmoor's prisoners time must have moved very slowly but not for me as the constant tick tick ticking tells me it's time i traveled on or traveled back i should say back in time beyond recorded history back thousands of years in fact this is merryvale one of dartmoor's most significant bronze age settlements [Music] maybe i'm a bit weird but this kind of thing in the landscape gets me really excited can you see that there's this long row of stones and it goes look it's got to be 200 meters in that direction but it's not just one row look there's a row here and there's a row behind it incredibly impressive huge amount of work and if that wasn't enough look we've got exactly the same here the twin rows of stones absolutely parallel to the first row and thirdly we've got some bloke who appears to be committing what looks like the worst archaeological crime imaginable is that a sander it's not a sander it's a scanner a scanner yeah what it's looking for is a micro microchip with hidden on this stone oh thank goodness yeah i thought there might be sandpaper on it i shouldn't think of the word for the machine polishing it out yeah no unfortunately these stones are on the threat from a lot of our grounded artifacts especially ones in accessible locations from theft so to try and combat that uh we put microchips within the stones so if they do get stolen we'll be able to hopefully track them down so you put in a little chip like you would in case you've got dog goggles exactly the same technology it's the same type of microchip that is ridiculous why would people nick these they're thousands of years old they're irreplaceable it's just so brutally stupid isn't it yeah what do you think they originally were i think these monuments are very complex they're associated with the landscape views they're setting in the landscape as well and the burial mounds just behind us we've got a stone circle and other cairns in this area i think we've got a kind of approach like a medieval church it could have been a processional way up to venerate the ancestors and they can or it could have been venerating the landscape it could have been a territorial market so many different uses probably occurred at these monuments so in an odd way not that far removed from all the christian crosses that i've seen throughout here i'm not going to say anything else i just think this place is so wonderful i'm just going to wander around have a look at it okay nice to meet you cheers whatever the reasons behind these stone rows archaeologists believe a prehistoric community thrived in maryvale in what would have been a much warmer climate it's difficult to imagine now but this more land was once abundant with luscious forests and animal prey [Music] today's terrain is relentless and i have to pick my way carefully through the stones to keep my feet dry almost danmore's endless capacity to surprise though is about to offer up another arresting spectacle i've just come off my path a bit there's the abbott's way going all along the top of those hills there and suddenly it's boggy morass and i'm soaking wet almost up to my knees now but the reason that i came here was i can't go any further than this but i wanted to show you that that little tour thing is called the sphinx and just like its statuesque namesake this remarkable rocky formation attracted victorian travelers keen to see and as this victorian picture shows photograph the sphinx for themselves but liz you don't call it the sphinx do you i certainly don't no that's known as vixen tour i think the sphinx is a relatively modern name it's been known as vixen tour for hundreds hundreds of thousands of years who was the vixen well the vixen that is the notorious witch of vixen tour called viksana pixarna what did you do she had a liking for travellers who were walking across the path that you were on on the abbott's way what do you mean the bog i've just been through yep that one the very same so she had a method of conjuring up a mist and luring unwary travellers into her bog when she caught sight of them she would clap her hands and cackle with delight and pull down the mist so the traveller was suddenly enveloped in this swirling mysterious mist became scared and before they knew it they were sinking deeper and deeper and deeper into vicks and torme and she'd leap off the tour fly over on her broomstick where the fingers of the traveler would just be seen sinking into the bog and before they they disappeared she'd snap them off one by one snap snap snap snap and suck out the inside before running back up to the tour it's a great story i could listen to that all day there's another thing about this environment that really impresses me and that's the sense of time here you go if you've been walking for a couple of hours but actually you've got no idea how long you've been walking do you find that oh absolutely time disappears i i think it's one of the other magics of them all time stands still it has no meaning well unfortunately time does still have meaning for me i've got to get on anyway very nice to talk to you if you hear a scream in the next quarter an hour you'll know what's happened thanks a lot bye big sunny sounds like a right horror story [Music] almost on the outskirts of tavistock now [Music] if i were a medieval pilgrim i think i'd be ready for another sign that i'm on the right path [Music] standing steadfast among the golfers the seven foot high pixies cross may well provide spiritual guidance for players praying for a good shot it certainly is a miracle that the cross has withstood the march of time to stay on course [Music] pilgrims and monks used the cross to point the way to tavistock abbey and escaped prisoners from princetown were whipped at the cross as punishment in some ways though it's incredible that these crosses still exist at all with dramatic tales of total upheaval during the reformation the one that intrigues me most took place in the 16th century when henry viii got rid of all the monks and dissolved all the monasteries and imposed a set of much more puritan vicars in their place and the village of walkhampton got this particularly zealous vicar who was absolutely determined to get rid of every last religious icon every crucifix every statue of a saint every cross in his entire parish [Music] when he found out about the pixies cross he instructed his parishioners to destroy the offending granite emblem however with no volunteers forthcoming he took the tools and the task into his own hands so he's all on his own attempting to hack away the old cross when suddenly he hears this roaring noise and he looks down and there is a big black bull staring him right in the eyes with dribble coming out of its mouth and pouring the ground with its hoof and he clearly wants the vicar to get out of the way but the vicar isn't backing down and the vicar stares at the ball and the ball stares at the vicar and the vicar stares at the bull and the bull stairs at the vicar and eventually it's night and neither of them are going to back down and eventually next morning all the villagers are gathered round and there's still this standoff until finally they managed to extract a promise from the vicar that he won't destroy the cross and they lead the bull away while the story of the bull of the parson may be just another of dartmoor's many legends it does hint at a deeper meaning something about nature versus religious obsession though in this case it was bullish persistence that ultimately saved this ancient cross [Music] my walk across dartmoor may not yet be complete but the final ticking of the clock is looming as i follow the old lich way of the way of the dead [Music] having laid the abbott's way to rest i'm now in the wake of the dead on the altogether more macabre old lich way this way of the dead was the final journey for christians who died on this moor their religion meant that no matter where they passed away their body had to be laid to rest in consecrated or sacred ground lich is an old english word for corpse and a lich way was a path that they used to carry the corpses along on their way to get buried uh lich gate was the little gate in the side of a church that the corpse came through and a lich owl was another word for a screech owl because people used to think that the noise it made was an omen of death they'll lift me up and lay me down play me down gently down till i reach consecrated [Music] who weaves this path's rather mournful undertaking into beautifully evocative verse [Music] song called the old litchway which sounds great when you sing it in a church or a cathedral and uh but it's it's sort of like old english and there's a piece of almost latin plain song in it yeah it mentions the places along the route where people would stop just to rest you can imagine carrying a corpse 12 miles is a pretty exhausting task but it isn't actually an ancient song no it's not an ancient song but it's very much in that style you know it's very much in that sort of timeless folk style if you like you know this area really confuses me because on one hand you know looking out here it's just burgeoning with life isn't it all the flowers coming out the leaves looking so intensely green and yet this is actually a way of death you imagine what it's like in midwinter here when you're carrying your nearest and dearest 12 miles lidford is that way to the to the west it would have been the most extraordinary i mean it'd be a tragic way of of of taking your loved ones to be buried so live for uphill is that where you're heading yeah uphill all the way see you all uphill good luck cheers i'll see you they'll lift me up and lay me down [Music] gently down till i reach consecrated ground along the old lich way and like steve these local actors have also been inspired by the old rich way as they recreate the dramatic procession of the deceased to a christian burial and the next life they too are reconnecting with the past as they negotiate the same primitive clapper bridges that once conveyed dartmoor's dead against [Music] it's compelling to think of the urban flow of generations of human settlement in a place so enduring as dartmoor the moors and woods bearing witness down the millennia and none more so the magical and primeval wisterman's wood [Music] the name dart as in dartmoor is said to derive from derwent the ancient name for oak trees it's here i have my first meeting with a member of the order of bards ovids and druids by the sound of it a man in perfect harmony with nature [Music] andy that music is so appropriate for this wood isn't it yeah it's perfect isn't it um just the kind of soundtrack to a landscape like this and this is what dartmoor would have looked like before it was a moor absolutely this is one of the um the last remaining pockets of ancient woodland on dartmoor um and yeah once the whole of dartmouth would have been forests like this so really when we look out over the wild expanse of dartmoor we're looking at the ruins of an ancient wildwood are there any particular stories or folk tales that tie in this area with druids or druidism we know from roman sources that the druids were shipped in sacred groves and here we are in a sacred grove and this would have been a bit of woodland in the iron age so who knows maybe uh maybe there would have been druids performing their rights here on a full moon well certainly on an evening like this it feels as though they're still here yeah yeah well and indeed good to meet you yeah you too safe travels enjoy your pilgrimage thank you time is almost at an end as my path along the old lich way reaches the church of saint petrocs i've been a time traveler in dartmoor discovering an ancient story where pixies and prisoners share its pages with standing stones and sherlock holmes and here we are the final resting place on this historic path along my journey through time to a place where time itself is written in stone [Music] i've come into this church which is pretty beautiful anyway isn't it because i'm looking for a particular gravestone it was a guy called george routley i think it's just here he died around about the beginning of the 19th century and i don't think you'll be very surprised to hear from his epitaph that he was a watchmaker he departed this life november the 14th 1802 wound up in hopes of being taken in hand by his maker and of being thoroughly cleaned repaired and set going in the world to come what a creative way to end your days from someone whose craft marked the very essence of life and on that timely note my pilgrimage has come to an end well i finally achieved my ambition i've walked all the way across dartmoor and i think it's quite appropriate that i should have finished talking about a watchmaker because in many ways dartmoor is frozen in time isn't it with little flashbacks in stone and in words we've had literary stories old wives tales tales in song tales about the moor itself it is an extraordinary landscape and personally what i like most about it is the fact that even in the second decade of the 21st century it's still pretty much untamed [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 68,891

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, british history, ancient tracks, tony robinson, british walks, british countryside, english history documentary, history documentary bbc, Odyssey, odyssey

Id: Jn2Dea0xhh0

Length: 46min 28sec (2788 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021