A Living Landscape
Farming on Dartmoor has never been easy. Ever since moorland dwellers first supplemented their hunting with the grazing of sheep and cattle around 4,000 years ago, farmers have had to cope with heavy rain, strong winds, poor soil and a short growing season. Over the centuries field boundaries have come and gone - Bronze Age people created primitive fields banked by low stoney reaves; medieval farmers cultivated strips divided by lynchets; and from the Middle Ages onwards, some tenants were allowed to enclose parts of the moorland in 'newtakes'. Today much of the heathland remains common land, grazed by sheep and ponies from neighbouring upland farms. Over 90% of the Dartmoor National Park is farmed, with livestock breeding on the moor, dairy and arable farms on the fringes.
You can read an overview of the 5,000 year history of farming on Dartmoor in the Farming History factsheet, or you can read the Land Use Issues on Dartmoor factsheet which examines how different groups of people make use of Dartmoor for very different activities.
Dartmoor National Park Authority also produces a range of publications which may be of interest, including a report by the Centre for Rural Research, Exeter University, on the State of Farming on Dartmoor. See the Publications Section for more information.
Dartmoor Ponies
There have been ponies here since 2,000BC, but not all the ponies are pure Dartmoor you will also come across Shetlands and other cross-breeds. They are untamed but not wild, and are marked with brands, ear tags and ear cuts to identify their owners. In autumn you might be lucky to witness them rounded up in the annual pony drift, when the new young are identified and some ponies (mostly males, or elderly) are sent to market. Pony numbers have declined over the last 50 years to less than 3,000 today - they are no longer needed for coal pits and polo - yet they are essential for moorland ecology.
There is a Dartmoor Ponies Factsheet which provides a further guide to Dartmoor's most popular inhabitants. Dartmoor National Park Authority also provides further information outlining ways that moorland ponies can be protected, in the Ponies on Dartmoor leaflet, and information about purchasing ponies from the commons of Dartmoor in the Purchasing Ponies leaflet.
