| PRINCE
TOWN is located within West Devon local authority area.
Historically it formed part of Lifton Hundred. It falls within
Tavistock Deanery for ecclesiastical purposes. and is
in the parish of Lydford, a grim little town some 1,400 ft. above
sea level, with an abominable climate of fog, snow, wind, and more
than 80 in. of cold rain over 100. It stands on a cot between the
two Hessary Tors, exposed to the bitter Northly and Easterly winds,
the least suitable place that could ever have been chosen for a town.
But the site was dictated by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt so as to be near
his granite quarries.
As early as 1780 a farm, named Prince Hall, was reclaimed on the site of an ancient tenement near Two Bridges, and in 1785 Mr. Tyrwhitt (later Sir Thomas), who had been appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries, set about improving the moor at a place which he named Tor Royal, about 1.5 m. SE. of Princetown. Here he made a productive estate and built a house in 1798. (Rowe, Perambulation of Dartmoor, 255) He was later instrumental in building the road from Tavistock to Princetown. It was Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt who proposed that a prison be built on the Moor to house the thousands of captives of the Napoleonic Wars, who had become too numerous to lodge in the prisons and prison-ships at Plymouth. The site was given by the Prince of Wales, who held the lands of the Duchy of Cornwall to which all the Moor belonged: hence the name Princetown. The prison was built in 1806 (architect, Daniel Alexander) at a cost of £130,000 and at one time between seven and nine thousand prisoners were crammed into it. A small town grew up near the prison. Two large inns were built during the war; one of them is the present Duchy Hotel. With the closing of the prison in 1816 the town almost collapsed, but the completion of the Dartmoor Railway in 1823 brought back many people to the granite quarries. The prison remained derelict until 1850, when it was reopened for prisoners serving long sentences. It has since been considerably extended. Princetown is
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