Princetown

Princetown sits within Dartmoor National Park on the B3212 between Yelverton and Two Bridges, at around 435 metres above sea level, the highest village on the moor. The village exists because of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, secretary to the Prince of Wales, who leased moorland from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1785 and named the new settlement after his patron. It was Tyrwhitt who proposed building a prison here, to hold French prisoners of war from the Napoleonic Wars, later joined by American prisoners taken during the War of 1812.

Construction ran from 1806 to 1809, and the prison closed in 1816 once the wars were over. It reopened in 1850 as a criminal prison and held inmates until 2024, when high radon levels forced their removal and a closure the government describes as temporary; no reopening date has been set. The prison is not open to visitors, but the Dartmoor Prison Museum, in the former prison dairy, covers its history from the Napoleonic depot through to the current closure.

Yelverton, on the south-western edge of the moor, is about 6 miles away along the B3212 and makes a lower-lying base for exploring Princetown and the high moor around it.