Tor — and here I quote from Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor where he
says ‘Risdon speaks of a noted place called Saddletor from the hills
near which the Lomen or as we now call it, the Lemon — “ fetcheth
her fountain” . The nearest stream to the tor is the Sig which rises on
Bag Tor Down about 1/4 mile S of it . . . it falls into the Lemon (the
springs of which are near Lud Gate)Despite the claim by the Norman-Welsh Geoffry of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae that Ludgate was so called for having been built by the ancient British king called Lud—a manifestation of the god Nodens—the name is believed by later writers to be derived from "flood gate" or "Fleet gate", from "ludgeat", meaning "back gate" or "postern", or from the Old English term "hlid-geat", meaning "postern" or "swing gate". just below Sigford, and immediately after having received the waters of the Langworthy Brook.’
All of which we shall be investigating in due course.
This particular stream, which becomes the River Sig, runs past
Bugtor cottages and is typical of these moorland streams, deep set in
ferns and bright flowers among the rocks as they chatter busily
onwards, and it was here that Syd Wills, now living at St Budeaux,
spent many happy hours of his childhood, and where he told me, ‘It
was an unwritten law to let the foxes drink before you collected the
duy’s water supply from the brook.’ He went on to tell me of the two
Indies who once ran Bagtor House and the Barton as guesthouse
nnd farm, their names Miss Blankiron and Miss Cross.
Memories of them too came from Miss Catherine Haines, now in
lu>r 80s and living at Bridford. She was a groom at Bagtor House in
the 1920s. And here once again the tragedy of fire touched the
Lemon’s tributary, the Sig. Early one morning she got up at five to
go cubbing and saw clouds of smoke coming from the neighbouring
liirm of Westabrook, an old thatched house standing near the banks
of the river.
She rushed down to wake up the Retallick family, who lived there,
and to help the oldest member of the family from his bed and into the
barn for safety. Eventually the fire engine arrived, ‘B ut,’ she said,
thore was some problem over getting the pump started to take water
I rom the stream, and I had to chase off to another farm for fuel.
Meanwhile Mr Retallick was concerned about his watch which, as
was his habit, he had tied to the bedpost for the night. It was resn ii‘(l — only to be stolen from him later. His son, Mr H. Retallick,
now farms Bagtor Barton and he told me that recently when they
were doing some repairs at Bagtor cottages they took down a partition and uncovered a small cubby hole like the ones from which
lickots are sold at railway stations. ‘My guess is that is where they
paid the men who worked in Newtake and Crownley M ines,’ he said
and there are also the remains of a blacksmith’s shop and blowing
house on the common.’
lie too remembered the two ladies from the Big House. ‘Proper
7
which have occurred on its banks.
Here, at its beginnings, controversy once raged, for water used to
be taken from it to feed the leat or pot water, the sole supply for
Ilsington village, and Dick Wills, parish historian of Narracombe,
whose family have farmed there for fourteen generations, told me
there were many accusations from the thirteenth century onwards
that too much water was taken, thus depriving the manor mill,
Bagtor, of its supply, whilst the leat was feeding the mills of Ilsington, Liverton and Pool.
‘It seem s,’ he said ‘that there was a trough at the source and from
a hole in this the water ran through the fields to Ilsington. The
villagers used to go and make the hole bigger so more water ran their
way. This caused a certain amount of ill feeling! ’
But for a moment we come back to the present century. On the
night of 6 March 1970, when the Bovey police and their 250 guests
were enjoying their twenty-first annual ball, soon after midnight
everyone was asked to file out of the ballroom into the courtyard, and
as they went they saw smoke pouring from the air vents, and outside
flames were leaping from the roof of the hotel.
The police tackled the fire with extinguishers until ten appliances
arrived with sixty firemen, but all they could do was to stop the blaze
Irom entirely destroying the hotel. A large section of the upper floor
was wiped out and extensive damage caused to the ground floor. It
was thought that the fire had started as the result of faulty wiring,
but fortunately at least there were no casualties, four children who
had been asleep upstairs being carried to safety. The following
morning the police had to open up a special depot for people to pick
up their coats at the police station in Newton Abbot, among them a
silver mink. Much to everyone’s relief the draw money and prizes
had also been saved! It was the biggest hotel fire in the area for
years, and now it is known as the Hotel with no Guests, for it has remained an empty shell ever since. All you can hear as you stand
looking over the gate is the whistling of the wind through the glassless windows. The owners did want to rebuild it on a bigger scale,
but the plan was turned down by the Dartmoor National Park Comm ittee. At the entrance is a board which states CLOSED UNTIL
FURTHER NOTICE. Could it perhaps be forever?
Let us look now at something beautiful instead, for it is only fair to
visit the Lemon’s main tributary while we are on this part of the
moor — the River Sig which rises in Bagtor Mire under Rippon
