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Puggie Stone

Natural Rock Feature

Nearest Town:Okehampton (12km WNW)
OS Ref (GB):   SX685877 / Sheet: 191
Latitude:50° 40' 24.58" N
Longitude:   3° 51' 40.48" W

Added by Rhiannon


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Folklore

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If you had £3m you could have bought the house that owns the land this stands on. It would be nice to overlook the Puggie Stone from your windows. I wouldn't say no.
Scarcely half a mile above Holy-street, a tor rises near the river's brink on the south side, called, by the country people, the Puckie, or Puggie Stone, and celebrated for the large rock-basin, or pan, (as it is popularly called,) on its summit. The antiquary, trusting to local report, will be disappointed when after having succeeded in scaling the rock, he finds that the characteristics of the genuine rock-basin, as described [on p.29] are not sufficiently clear to enable him to pronounce, that this is not one of the examples, attributable exclusively to the operation of natural agencies. Although of large size, it is not of the usual circular form, nor do its sides display any decisive indications of artificial adaptation. But if disappointed in the main object of his research, the explorere will be repaid for his escalade, by the commanding view he will have gained of the wild-wood glen down which the Teign rushes, foaming along its rock-bound channel, in all the youthful vigour of a mountain-born torrent.

For the means of examining this basin, as it can only be reached by a ladder, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Nicolas Clampit, the hospitable occupier of the interesting old mansion at Holy-street, one of the Forest tenants.
Samuel Rowe's 'Perambulation of the antient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor and the Venville Precincts' (1848). You'd think he would like the fact the basin's not 'real' and natural. You'd think he might like that someone deliberately adjusted it (c.f. druid sacrifices). If anyone even did. I would like it either way, natural or artificial.

'Puckie' surely has to have connections with the piskies - like 'puck'. (Though a 'puggy' was a word for a squirrel far away in eastern England).

JLW Page (in his 'exploration of Dartmoor and its antiquities' 1889) says "This isolated stone is certainly the largest single mass off the Moor, though some of the blocks under Combe Farm, at the entrance of the Teign Gorge, rivals. It has a length of twenty-five feet, a breadth of eleven, and is no less than fourteen feet in height."
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
6th December 2016ce
Edited 7th December 2016ce