Bleak House, Lydford, Dartmoor National Park

Bleak House, Lydford, Dartmoor National Park

According to the Dartmoor expert Eric Hemery in 'High Dartmoor':

'The peat-works are situated at the bottle-neck of the mire ... When the works first gave promise of financial success and the railway from Bridestowe was built in 1879, the manager was provided with a house eight hundred yards downstream; in this short distance the dreary surroundings of Rattle Brook Head were exchanged for a site of romantic attractions, the valley narrowing, the sides steepening and the now leaping brook excavating a defile through which came a fine prospect of middle Tavy country. 'Dunnagoat Cottage', they called it, known ever since in its dereliction as 'Bleak House'.'