Lettaford is an ancient settlement on the fringes of Dartmoor. Sited in a hollow for shelter, its buildings are grouped around a green, some still in active farming use. The public road that takes you there breaks up into tracks up onto the moor. Since before 1300, farmers have grazed their cattle on the rough upland pasture and cultivated crops in the tiny fields lower down. The land yielded a surprisingly good living over the centuries, and their way of life and careful economy was expressed in the longhouses they built to live in at one end, and shelter their cattle at the other. After 1500, such well-built dwellings sprang up in greater numbers in this part of Devon than anywhere else.

One of our buildings is just such a longhouse; another started as such but now presents itself as a handsome Victorian farmhouse. Our third Landmark at Lettaford is the diminutive former Nonconformist chapel. The self-contained and resourceful life of an upland people goes on around you as it always has, while the rising moors around are there to be explored or simply admired, depending on your tastes.

The Chapel is a plain granite building typical of rural Nonconformity, built by Miss Pynsent of Higher Lettaford in 1866. Firstly Bible Christian, and later Methodist, it closed in 1978. With little chance of survival on its own, its loss would have been a pity for Lettaford, so we took it on. Here two of you can cook, eat and sleep all in one big room, with solid fuel stove, tucked away at the edge of the green beside a small stream.

Sleeps: 2