Hidden Dartmoor National Park, Devon, Brentor Church
Brent Tor is one of the most impressive rock outcrops in Dartmoor. With St Michael’s Church at its top, it makes a distinctive and famous silhouette on the Dartmoor skyline.
The tor is unusual as it is one of the few on Dartmoor not to be made of granite. In fact, it is formed from basaltic lava which flowed some 350 million years ago into a shallow sea that covered the area during the Lower Carboniferous and Devonian periods. As the lavas flowed out into the sea some solidified into globular masses known as pillow lavas. Others were broken up by explosive contact with the sea water.
This lava formed a mound on the sea floor which was then eroded by sea currents with the resulting debris being washed down the slopes of the mound. Debris of this nature can still be seen loose on the southern slopes of the tor.
The parish of Brentor is situated in West Devon, about 4 miles (6km) north of the market town of Tavistock on the north west edge of the Dartmoor National Park. To the east is the River Burn (a tributary of the River Tavy), and Gibbet Hill backed by an impressive range of granite Dartmoor Tors. To the north and west is the River Lyd (a tributary of the River Tamar) and an 'area of outstanding natural beauty' in the Lyd Valley.
The Tor itself is a dramatic conical volcanic plug 1100 feet (335m) high. In contrast to the neighbouring granite tors of Dartmoor, Brent Tor was formed from pillow lava extruded under a shallow sea some 350 million years ago. The result is an 'excellent and rare example of ...submarine volcanic deposits' and has been registered as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).
The first church in Brentor appears to have been built in around 1130 by Robert Giffard, whose father, the Lord of Longueville, came to England with the Norman Conquest.
Legend, however, says that the church was built by a wealthy merchant, whose ship was caught in a storm off the Devon coast and who, in the midst of the tempest, cried out to his patron St Michael, that if he were saved, he would build a church upon the first land he sighted.
Whether, Brent Tor would have been the first land he saw from off the Devon coast is debatable, but the legend of a sea-tossed merchant founding the church is an established part of local folklore and was repeated by Charles Kingsley in his Westward Ho, first published in 1855.
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