Holne

Holne is a small village on the southern edge of Dartmoor, its cottages gathered around a church and green rather than a high street. The settlement is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as “Holla”, a name from the Anglo-Saxon Holegn, referring to a place where holly once grew thickly.

St Mary’s church, at the centre of the village, dates from around the thirteenth century and is thought to have belonged to nearby Buckfast Abbey; its first recorded priest, Roger Prigge, held the living from 1240. The churchyard’s yew tree has been dated by dendrologists to more than a thousand years old, possibly older than the church itself. The novelist Charles Kingsley was born in the village and baptised in the church in 1819; a memorial window was installed in the north transept in 1894.

From the village, tracks lead onto Holne Moor and the open high ground above the Dart valley, making Holne a useful base for a stay built around walking rather than shops. Ashburton is the nearest town with a fuller range of pubs and cafes, a short drive away. Ask about the route from any Holne cottage to the moor gate before booking, since not every property in the village sits on the edge of open access land.