Wistman's Wood
Wistman's Wood on the high moorland of Dartmoor National Park near Two Bridges is one of the most ancient and atmospheric fragments of natural woodland surviving in southern Britain, a grove of stunted, moss-draped pedunculate oaks clinging to a boulder-strewn hillside at an altitude of approximately 380 metres where the harsh conditions of the high moor have produced a woodland of extraordinary character. The trees, which would be sizeable forest specimens in a more sheltered valley setting, have been dwarfed by the wind, poor soil and high rainfall of the moorland to a height of rarely more than seven metres, their gnarled trunks and twisted branches creating a landscape of considerable visual power. The clitter, or boulder field, within which the trees grow provides the conditions for the wood's survival at this altitude. The large Dartmoor granite boulders offer protection for tree seedlings from grazing animals and from the worst of the moorland weather, and the moisture retained between the boulders supports the luxuriant growth of mosses, lichens and ferns that cover every available surface within the wood. The effect is one of absolute verdancy in an otherwise austere moorland setting: the interior of Wistman's Wood is green and dripping even in dry weather, the mosses holding moisture like sponges and creating a micro-climate considerably warmer and more humid than the open moor outside. The antiquity of the wood is difficult to establish precisely, but pollen analysis from nearby peat deposits indicates that oak woodland has been present in this location for at least 7,000 years, connecting the existing trees to a woodland tradition extending back to the period immediately after the last Ice Age. Individual trees within the wood may be several hundred years old. The wood has a powerful atmosphere that has generated folk associations with the supernatural throughout its recorded history. Local tradition associated it with the Wisht Hounds, spectral black dogs said to pursue the souls of the unbaptised across the moor, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Dartmoor research almost certainly encountered this tradition before The Hound of the Baskervilles was published.