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from Village Green magazine
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from Village Green magazine
Location: Devon
An extract from an article about the Bratton Clovelly Packhorse Trail project published in Devon Rural Community Council's quarterly magazine Village Green (issue 88, June 2002)
The heritage of a village that grew up centuries ago at the junction of four vital trade routes across Devon came to life recently in story and song.
Local choirs and youngsters joined forces in May to launch Bratton Clovelly’s new ‘Packhorse Trail’ at an event featuring music and tales from long ago.
The Packhorse Trail, funded by the Countryside Agency’s Local Heritage Initiative, is the first part of a long-term project that aims to record and open up the history of the village, which developed in the Middle Ages at the junction of four trading routes and where, incidentally, the sub-post office has been in the same family for 160 years.
The Packhorse Trail project is run by a hard-working committee of six, drawn from the total population of about 400. It includes a retired archaeologist/ historian and agronomist; two farmers’ wives, a schoolteacher, and an ex-civil servant.
“We’ve produced a leaflet that guides walkers round the three mile route in about an hour, following ‘packhorse’ markers crafted by a local carpenter,” says Toni Kemeny, who came up with the idea for the trail in 2000, when the Wren Trust set up its first annual Baring-Gould folk festival in Bratton Clovelly.
The walk begins in the village square, near the gate of a church which has two strange claims to fame. Its interior walls are decorated with paintings that were created in the 17th century, in spite of the efforts of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan regime to whitewash away such signs of decadence. And, with more concern for superstition than religion, a dead black cat is interred over the church doorway, to keep out witches.
More information on the trail is available on the project’s website.
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