Dartmoor National Park Authority

Arthur was born and brought up at Haytor and has lived and farmed there all his life. His mother ran the Ludgate Hotel which his father built in 1897.

“We had, what did we have? About 12 rooms I suppose, and people, yes, they’d come year after year, and, well, they only came to paint and go on the moor and read or something like that …they’d stay, they’d say a month perhaps and go away and then come back later in the year again. But we opened from Easter, my mother used to open from Easter till about the end of October, then it would be all shut up”

“Now then I’ll tell you something. After the First World War they had a pony sale in Newton market, and these ponies, I think they came from New South Wales, they were Polo ponies which I suppose the Army’d got rid of at the end of the war, no longer necessary, and he bought one of them and they use to have pony races and my father used to race this pony and he used to enter in the name of Mr Moorman's Queen of the Moor, and this pony won a lot of races. And out at Huccaby Tor, they had pony racing out there and at Huccaby Tor Royalty were out there one year I believe, out at Huccaby”