The tall misshapen cross standing on Horn Hill at grid reference SX66927110 is Horn's Cross, one of a large number marking the ancient route between the religious houses on the opposite sides of the Moor, a route which Starkey called the Monks' Path. It is appropriately named, for it is now regarded as having been far more widely used for monastic travel than the so-called Abbot's Way.

The route comes up from Buckfast via Hawson Cross and Holne Gate, where it enters the Moor proper, then runs via the site of Two Thorns Cross near Venford and on to Horn's Cross. From here it crosses the O Brook at Horse Ford, climbs to Horse Ford Cross and the cross on Down Ridge, skirting the foot of Skaur Gut and up to the pair of crosses on Ter Hill then on to Mount Misery Cross, before descending again to Childe's Tomb. Although of recent construction, the cross surmounting the latter is on the site of a more ancient one. Goldsmith's Cross is the next in line, before Siward's Cross, the route then passing the modern cross above Drivage Bottom, also on an ancient site, and on to Newleycombe and Clasiwell Crosses before descending to cross Mewy at Riddipit Steps, now the site of Lethertor Bridge. From there it climbs out of the valley and off high Dartmoor to Buckland Abbey via the cross at Cross Gates and Yennadon Cross. A secondary route to Tavistock Abbey deserts the main route at Yennadon and, going via the cross outside Walkhampton Church, climbs to the cross on Huckworthy Common, passes Pixies Cross and the unnamed cross on Whitchurch Down, before descending into the town.

That so many crosses remain in situ along the route testifies to its former importance, whereas there are only five crosses remaining on both branches of the supposed Abbot's Way - which is in reality the Jobbers Cawse, used by wool jobbers rather than monks. The northernmost route also crosses far easier terrain, as Hemery observes - "this easily accessible route [the Monks' Path] provides a sharp contrast to that of the alleged Way, which clings obstinately to wind- swept heights and bog-ridden river heads".

Horn's Cross itself also marks a junction of tracks, for running north-south is the Cumston Track, leading from Cumston Farm all the way to Dockwell Gate. The locality, on the summit of Horn Hill, is (or was) also called Stacombe's Telling-Place, after a farmer of that name who apparently used to assemble his flocks here for counting, or 'telling'. I am not certain who first recorded this alternative placename in print - perhaps it was William Crossing - and the personal name has been so spelt by the few other authors who have mentioned it. However, I feel that a spelling error may have been inadvertently perpetuated, and that it was supposed to be Stancombe, for this surname was once a reasonably familiar one in this part of the Moor - although it cannot be correctly said that it was ever very frequently met with - and I cannot recollect ever having come across the variant Stacombe in any documentary source. In Crossing's day there were almost certainly Stancombes still living in the district - there are known to have been families of this name living in Widecombe, Holne, Walkhampton and Lydford in the 1850s, and there were doubtless others, too - but now there are only five persons of this surname listed in the phone directory which covers the entire West Devon area (the name Stacombe, by the way, does not appear in the directory at all).

The Dartmoor National Park Authority has confirmed three pony agreements with pony keepers on common land at Holne Moor. The ten year agreements provide direct financial support for small herds of traditional moorland Dartmoor type ponies. Such agreements could provide a model for more widespread agreements across the commons, assuring the presence of traditional ponies on Dartmoor for years to come. The Holne Moor agreements are just part of a wider range of initiatives formulated to secure a better furture for Dartmoor ponies.

In Holne churchyard opposite the porch stands what is called a Dole Stone in the church guide booklet. However, I do not believe that it is a true one - they are usually called Dole Tables - in the strictest sense in which the term is applied, for the Holne example is a narrow chest tomb with a large bevelled ledger, and actually bears an inscription to the memory of John Coswell and his wife Mary who died in 1782 and 1771 respectively. My understanding of a true Dole Table is one erected specifically and solely for the purposes of dispensing charity, often the handing out of bread to the poor on certain days of the year. In other cases, what were known as Graveside Doles were handed out in alms to the poor, the amounts of which were usually specified in the charitable bequests of former worthies of the district, and in these instances the coins were often laid out upon the ledger of the deceased person. In respect of the so-called Dole Stone at Holne, it should be noted that the inscription on the chest tomb bears no reference to any charity, and neither is there a commemorative board hanging within the church recording any charitable bequests, which one would expect to find if the structure had been erected primarily for this purpose. The inscription in any case indicates that it is an ordinary chest tomb, and in this case I think that it was probably used to dispense charity, perhaps from the parish poor box, simply because of its convenient position, and doubtless similarly situated chest tombs in other churchyards were used in the same way.

Inside is what has been described as the finest painted screen in any Devon church, a superbly crafted oak screen of c1500, with a matching pulpit in front. This, like most of the Dartmoor churches, contains some memorials to those killed in action in the two world wars, and at Holne a window erected to the son of the Lord of the Manor, has a small tablet beneath bearing the following words -

Opposite this memorial is one to a servicemen who was killed in France in the closing months of the war, and behind his plaque is the simple wooden cross which was erected over his grave on the battlefield, which bears a poignantly simple epitaph -

The larger wooden commemorative plaque is more informative, as too is the brass in the north transept to Major H V Duke, who was known affectionately as 'Bubbles' to his comrades. He served with the 2nd Battalion of the Devon Regiment, won a Military Cross at Vizzini when he was still a Captain, was seriously wounded by shellfire on the Regalbuto Ridge in mid 1943, and returned to active service only to be killed leading the men of C Company, 2nd Devons in the
assault on Sword Beach during the D Day Landings on 6th June 1944.

As observed above, there are many dozens of similar memorials to be seen in the Dartmoor
churches and, of course, throughout the nation. But the most important of the memorials in Holne church, from the historical point of view, is the tablet in the north transept which commemorates -

The epitaph is typical of the wordy epistles of the era which were composed to commemorate the great and the good, but why the need for all the exclamation marks on this particular example I know not. The Wreys have a long and illustrious pedigree, as can be evinced, by those familiar with heraldry, from the tiny shield which surmounts the tablet, which displays the arms of Wrey quartering those of Bourchier, Plantagenet, and de Bohun. As the inscription records, the remains of Sir Bourchier Wrey are buried at Tawstock church, in North Devon, where the family and their ancestors have been Lords of the Manor for no less than thirty one consecutive generations. It is a remarkable lineage, which can be traced in an unbroken descent from Philip de Braose who married Aanor, daughter of Judhel of Totnes, sometime in the late eleventh century, and the church at Tawstock is positively awash with memorials to the Bourchiers and the Wreys, the direct descendants of this marriage. There are forty or so monuments and tablets to the family there, which display a combined total of around two hundred coats of arms - two shields there present nightmares for family historians and amateur heraldists, both quarterly of fifty three pieces!

The little shield at Holne, however, displays the standard Wrey coat, which had been borne by the family for a number of generations, since the 1653 marriage of Sir Chichester Wrey of North Russell to Ann, daughter of Edward Bourchier, by which marriage the Wreys inherited the Manor of Tawstock from the Bourchier line. This marriage is signified by the second quartering in the coat of arms. The Sir Bourchier Wrey commemorated at Holne was the fourth generation eldest son to bear this name. The Bourchiers, meanwhile, had been Lords of Tawstock, Lords Fitzwarren, and Earls of Bath, for a number of generations previously, the arms in the third quarter signifying the marriage, sometime c1400, of William Bourchier, Count of Ewe in Normandy, to Anne, daughter of Thomas de Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, who was the son of King Edward III & Phillippa of Hainault.

The de Bohun ancestry is also tied to the early Plantagenets, and there is in fact a 'double descent' in this lineage. For Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex and High Constable of England, who was killed at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, had married Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward I & Eleanor of Castille. His great granddaughter, Eleanor de Bohun, later married Thomas de Woodstock, which marriage is signified by the fourth quartering in the Wrey coat of arms.

To summarise, for those not fully conversant with heraldic practice, Thomas de Woodstock marries a de Bohun heiress, resulting in a coat bearing the arms of Plantagenet (Woodstock) quartering de Bohun. A Bourchier then marries the heiress of that marriage, and is thus entitled to their arms, hence Bourchier quarters Plantagenet and de Bohun. A Wrey later marries a Bourchier heiress and is thus entitled to quarter all of the previous arms, hence Wrey quartering Bourchier, Plantagenet and de Bohun, which is now the accepted coat of the Wreys, and is
inherited by each generation in succession.

An illustrious pedigree indeed! The Plantagenet connections alone bring all the Royal Houses of Europe into the ancestry, amongst them the Counts of Anjou, Castille, Navarre and Torraine, the Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, Saxony and Acquitaine, the Kings of Denmark, France and
Prussia, and a host of others. The name originates from Geoffrey, Count of Anjou and Torraine, who wore a sprig of broom - the "planta genista" - as his emblem. It was his marriage to Matilda, daughter of King Henry I, which created the most powerful dynasty in Europe, and one which was to rule England for 331 years. The name was not used officially, however, until very much later, when Richard of York, a direct descendant of King Henry III, and Lord Protector under King Henry VI, claimed the throne, calling himself Plantagenet to emphasise his claim.

Back in the graveyard, amongst the final resting places of the 'ordinary' folk of Holne, a large headstone near the entrance to the new extension to the consecrated ground looks as though it has tried to eclipse this long pedigree! Erected as a memorial to the Holne ancestry of a family who now live in Boston, U.S.A, it reads like a mini-history of the local Butland family, and
commemorates no less than nineteen of them, the largest number of individuals commemorated by a single memorial in any Dartmoor graveyard or church. But those who come to the graveyard to see if they can find Ned's "mattress bed" will search in vain for it, for it disappeared long ago - or, perhaps, its position might be marked by one of the very weather-beaten tombstones near the ancient and much gnarled yew tree, from which the inscriptions have been entirely obliterated through long years of exposure to the Elements. It was Crossing who first correctly recorded the intriguing epitaph on Ned Collins' headstone, the letters of which were becoming indistinct even in his day, the opening couplet of which informed its readers that -

A leaflet "Guide to the Heraldry on the Bourchier-Wrey Monument in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Holne", produced by Dartmoor Press, is available in the church. All profits from sales go to church funds.

Holne is yet another of the many Dartmoor/West Devon Parishes not recognised by the IGI. Unfortunately, those who attempt to glean something useful from the earliest pages of the Registers will not be able to recognise very much in them either! For they are in pretty grim condition, and the handwriting is generally abominable. Regrettablly, there are also a lot of pages missing from the contemporary BTs. For what they are worth, the surviving Registers begin in 1603 (bp), 1618 (bur), 1653 (m), but many pages are of little use untl c1650 onwards, and some of the later ones are also in a very poor state. The BTs start from 1597.

There are 1,099 Holne entries on the Dartmoor & West Devon Genealogy Index (DGI) a surname search service from which is available from Dartmoor Press.

Most researchers will, of course, be aware of the fact that they will have to check numerous early  spelling variants when searching for placenames in any old records - comments which apply similarly to personal names. Unfortunately, the original 1851 census returns for the majority of the Dartmoor parishes were transcribed by persons who did not have the remotest clue about the placenames (or surnames) of the districts, and so did not know what badly handwritten entries were supposed to represent. Many weird and wonderful names have therefore been invented! Their presence can seriously lead researchers astray and, most especially now that the 1851 CD-ROM is in widespread use, lead them to overlook whole households and even large chunks of entire villages by using the search facility which the CD-ROM provides (which, of course, only recognises "as spelt" entries). The following are the pure mistranscriptions and entirely fictional property names which appear in the 1851 census for Holne, which researchers will need to be aware of, together with their correct names (note that spelling variants which were correctly used, of which there are of course very many examples, and 'authentic' misspellings which appear in the originals, are not included in this list) -

Holm Mill = Holne Mill; Willfriton = Wellpriton; Compton = Cumston

The following are held at the Devon Record Office, Exeter: Overseers' Accounts 1711-1830, Settlement Examinations & Removal Orders 1730-1830, Apprenticeship Indentures and/or Apprenticeship Register 1739-1841, Bastardy Examinations & Maintenance Orders 1769-1825.

In the church at Holne hangs a tablet bearing the following inscription -

From the Regimental History of the Devons I learnt that Major Duke - who was affectionately known to his comrades as "Bubbles", for a reason which I have been unable to ascertain - won his MC at Vizzini, and was later wounded on the Regalbuto Ridge - "...whatever he had been hit with had penetrated his chest and had passed right through leaving a wound in his back big enough to need plugging with a shell dressing...bleeding internally...but still on his feet and in command he...refused to leave whilst other wounded remained". At this time (mid 1943) he was still a Captain, but must have been promoted whilst recovering from his wounds, for he returned to the
fray to lead C Company of the 2nd Devons as a Major at Normandy.

The huge flotilla of small craft heading for the five Normandy beaches in the early hours of the morning of 6th June 1944 heralded the start of the largest amphibious assault in the history of warfare. Sword, Gold and Juno were the codewords for the beaches where the British & Commonwealth Divisions were to land, and one of the two in the US Sector was known as Utah, but perhaps the best known to present generations will be the beach at "Bloody" Omaha, where the Americans took a hammering.

The 2nd Battalion (under the Command of 231 Brigade) was amongst those who landed on Sword Beach in the British Sector, C Company's objective being to secure the area around Asnelles and Le Hamel, having been put onto the beaches by landing craft from HMS Glenroy which had anchored about 7 miles from the coast just before 6am. Later that morning 14 Platoon had become nailed down under a hail of fire from an enemy strongpoint on the outskirts of Le Hamel, and "Bubbles" Duke ran through the fire and into a ditch to ask what was holding up the advance. Crawling out again with his binoculars to take a look for himself, he was hit in the head by a lone sniper. He was killed instantly. He was apparently very well liked and respected by his troops, and the Regimental History observes that his loss "was a bitter blow to every man in the Battalion" and that "no written or verbal account of D Day in the Regiment fails to mention the passing of a quite exceptional young man".

As history has recorded, the Devons, along with all of the other Battalions who had landed in Occupied France on 6th June, finally managed to break out of the bridgehead, which ultimately led to Germany's capitulation, so it can be truthfully said that Major Hugh Victor Duke, and the thousands of others who died on the beaches that day trying to secure that first foothold on enemy territory, did not die in vain.