Shaugh Prior is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

on the south-western side of

Dartmoor Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, England. The moorland and surrounding land has been protected by National Park status since 1951. Dartmoor National Park covers . The granite which forms the uplands dates from the Carboniferous P ...

in the county of

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...

, England. It is situated about 8 miles north-east of the historic centre of the city of Plymouth. In 2001 its population was 751. The parish stretches from the edge of Plymouth to the high moorland of Dartmoor. The

River Plym The River Plym is a river in Devon, England. It runs from Dartmoor in the centre of the county southwest to meet the River Meavy, then south towards Plymouth Sound. The river is popular with canoeists, and the Plym Valley Railway runs alongsi ...

forms its western and northern boundaries up to the river's source at Plym Head. The higher parts of the parish are rich in Bronze Age monuments such as cists and cairns, and there is much evidence of

tin mining Tin mining began early in the Bronze Age, as bronze is a copper-tin alloy. Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with approximately 2 ppm (parts per million), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm. History Tin extraction and use can ...

. The area of Lee Moor that has been much mined for

china clay Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedra ...

is within the parish, but outside the

Dartmoor National Park Dartmoor is an upland area in southern Devon, England. The moorland and surrounding land has been protected by National Park status since 1951. Dartmoor National Park covers . The granite which forms the uplands dates from the Carboniferous P ...

. The name derives from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

', a

copse Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeate ...

, and the fact that the manor belonged to

Plympton Plympton is a suburb of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England. It is in origin an ancient stannary town. It was an important trading centre for locally mined tin, and a seaport before the River Plym silted up and trade moved down river to P ...

Priory. The grade I listed church dedicated to St. Edward has its origins in the 11th century, but the present building with its prominent granite tower, dates from the 15th.

Notable people

Joseph Palmer (1716–88), an American general during the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

, was born here; as was John Phillips (1835–97), the founder of the Aller Vale Pottery in

Kingskerswell Kingskerswell (formerly Kings Carswell, or Kings Kerswell) is a village and civil parish within Teignbridge local government district in the south of Devon, England. The village grew up where an ancient track took the narrowest point across a m ...

Notable people

References

Further reading