ROCK IDOLS – Dartmoor’s Tors Re-imagined  

The co-authors of a new illustrated book about Dartmoor, Sophie Pierce and Alex Murdin, explain why, for them, the tors are alive…

Dim shapes looming dark and cold out of swirling mist; blue shadows melting into a river of bluebells; hazy stacks shimmering under an adder-baking summer’s sun. Forbidding castles guarded by croaking ravens; granite towers set in a sea of purple heather; rocky hollows harbouring secrets. Just a few impressions of Dartmoor’s tors gathered in our memory.

This is how we begin our new book, Rock Idols: a guide to Dartmoor in 28 tors.  Waxing a little lyrical, perhaps, but to us the tors are Dartmoor’s crowning glory, what make Dartmoor ‘Dartmoor’.  For those of us lucky enough to live near this mystical place, there is perhaps a danger of taking the tors for granted, and forgetting how special they really are. That is partly why we wrote the book; we wanted to pay homage to a place we really love, but also to explore the charismatic allure of these extraordinary natural monoliths.

The tors are 280 million years old; they rise up from the moor, like stone beings, in a variety of outlandish shapes and sizes. They have given rise to many legends involving everything from witches to wisht hounds, and are the inevitable focus of any walk on Dartmoor, being very visible markers in the landscape.  And yet we tend to perceive these epic rock stacks as cold and still – almost dead. But they are most definitely living beings – just on a totally different timescale from us, maybe moving a millimetre or two in a hundred years. They are certainly alive in our imaginations and have been the basis of so many of Dartmoor’s myths – the Devil at Dewerstone, Old Crockern at Crockern Tor and Vixiana at Vixen Tor to name a few.

This lively quality of the stone is the reason the tors have been the subject of all these stories over the years. And perhaps our ancestors viewed them as sacred? The title of our book – ‘Rock Idols’ was a term used by Victorian antiquarians to describe the tors, because they believed they were worshipped by the Druids. This is not such a strange idea. Many cultures around the world, including the Sami and Aborigine people, revere rocks because of their natural grandeur and possible connection to celestial worlds. So perhaps our predecessors were the same? And this links back to the tors, because it’s believed many of Dartmoor’s megalithic monuments like stone circles and stone rows were positioned to align with the tors – natural monoliths in the landscape.

Our book contains new drawings by Alex of 28 of the tors. During our research, we had the great joy of discovering that by including drawings we were actually reviving a rather venerable tradition – that of the illustrated guidebook.  Many of the old Victorian guides to Dartmoor contain stunning engravings, which, it could be argued, are more thoughtful and expressive than the photographs which are the norm today. We have reproduced some of the best in our book, sitting alongside Alex’s drawings.

Having lived in this wonderful part of Devon for 25 years now, Dartmoor has been the part of the ups and downs of our lives, and has huge emotional resonance for us. In 2017 our elder son Felix died suddenly, and since this terrible event we have found great solace in the ebb and flow of life on the moor, and our growing connection to the deep time of Dartmoor, and in particular the tors. As Felix’s life was intertwined with these rocks where he played as a child and walked as a young man, so they hold the memory, like tombstones, of him and all our ancestors.

Sophie and Alex will be presenting an illustrated talk about the book on Thursday 3rd April at Totnes Methodist Church starting at 19:30.  Tickets are available from the Eastgate Bookshop or online: https://buytickets.at/sophiepierce/1585752

The drawings from the book will be on show in an exhibition – Rock Idols: Secret Lives of the Tors –  at the Dartmoor National Park Visitor Centre in Princetown, from April 1st 2025.  (10-4pm every day)

Rock Idols: a guide to Dartmoor in 28 tors – publishes on April 1st with Wild Things Publishing https://wildthingspublishing.com/product/rock-idols-dartmoor/