Blackborough House lies half a mile North West of here. It was built in 1838 by George Francis Wyndham, the fourth and last Earl of Egremont.

Designed to be his finest achievement and a more prestigious family seat than those of his cousins, he lacked their wealth and ran into financial difficulties. Neither Blackborough House (nor Silverton House five miles north of Exeter) were ever completed; the Earl died in 1845, seven years after coming into his title. During that time he managed to spend an incredible £300,000 and his property had been heavily mortgaged.

Blackborough House is really two giant houses placed back to back. In its hey day the Italian style arches, twin towers and huge chimneys towering over the terraced gardens and walled vegetable area must have been an imposing sight.

The Earl lived in the northern half and the other part was occupied by the rector of the new Blackborough Church. There were fifty or so rooms, some of them fitted out to resemble the Earl's sloop, the 'Hawke' which he commanded in 1825. There was also a Great Hall which was nearly three stories high and boasted a glass dome. Later, this area was made into an impluvium. A subsequent owner remembers the remains of a pulpit in a chapel in the top storey. The house's history includes use as a school and a home for 'wayfarers'. In the Second World War it was used to intern conscientious objectors, who were given agricultural training and sent to work on local farms.

Since the building was never completed and was subsequently slowly dismantled by various owners, it has gained a reputation as something of a folly. Blackborough House, still a striking landmark with its gothic looking chimneys set against the sky, is privately owned and currently inhabited.

Blackborough Beacon is the dome shaped hill to the left of where you are standing. Known as 'Mardle Pen', it was held in reverence by the older people of the village. It was reputed that:

"When Blackborough Beacon sinks under the hill Then the world's agoing to stand still."

Strangely enough, the mound is said to have sunk twenty metres, and this is due to its having been hollowed out for whetstone extraction. On one occasion "a hogshead of cider was drawn through from 'one side to the other"!

The beacon was lit as part of an early warning system across southern England to alert people to the approach of the Spanish Armada. Four hundred years later in 1988 local children took part in a reconstruction of the events when they met at the church to be told of the Armada's approach, took faggots to the hill and watched the lighting of the beacon and later feasted in the churchyard. The fiftieth anniversary of D-Day was also marked by the lighting of a chain of fires across the country.

This churchyard was enclosed in 1838 as the site for the new church of All Saints, built by George Francis Wyndham, whose estate then included the parish and manor lands of Blackborough. Before the erection of this church the parishioners used Saint Mary's at Kentisbeare, the ancient manorial chapel at All Hallows, mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1068, having fallen into decay at the time of the Reformation. No trace of that building remains, only some mossy stones near an ancient yew tree.

As part of the congregation of All Saints, the whetstone workers of the village were "well up to the average and took full advantage of the new church and school" (the present village hall) built for them. The Earl died in 1845 and his estate declined. His widow moved away and the upkeep of the church fell upon local yeoman families; the elements continually threatened a building in such an exposed position. At almost 800 feet above sea level, the shingled octagonal spire and sturdy tower was a well established landmark which could be picked out from thirty miles away.

All Saints was maintained in use until 1994 when the Diocese and Local Authority forced its closure and subsequent demolition.

In the 18th and 19th centuries travellers on the main Exeter to Honiton road could see a long white horizontal line on the hills to the North-East. Curiosity got the better of some people, they went and had a look; the white line was in fact the spoil from the mine shafts of the Blackborough whetstone miners.

Whetstones were used for sharpening edge tools. The concretions found in one stratum of the greensand cap of the Blackdown Hills were of "just the right lightweight porous composition and abrasive surface" to provide material for whetstones (Devonshire 'batts'). For 200 years the industry flourished, providing whetstones of a very high quality to a huge market. By 1900 there were only three mines left, reworking old ground until the concretions were worked out. By 1910 the invention of Carborundum stones spelt the end of whetstone mining.The last solitary miner left in 1929.

The mines were driven horizontally into the hill for up to 400 metres. They were dug by hand and had to be "braced and propped for their full length, every inch" with precious hedge and coppice timber. The Reverend R.S. Chalk, son of the Rector of Kentisbeare, records how, while walking with a friend above Sainthill, (a hamlet to the south of here) they heard tapping from underground. This was the last whetstoner at work and "it was necessary to walk very gently to avoid causing the tunnel to collapse."

The tunnels, which were lit by candle light, were narrow at the entrance and widened and heightened further inside, so that two men with barrows could pass. Cross galleries were dug to extract more stones. In the latter stages of production the mines had lockable doors. Caverns could be up to 6 metres high and 40 metres wide. When the area was completely worked out the whole excavation was allowed to fall in.

Pieces of greensand the size of a horse's head were brought out and worked on the spot. The stone was greenish and moist and could be worked with a unique double-headed tool called a basing axe, made locally in Kentisbeare. After rough shaping, the stones were brought down to the village to be hewn to their final dimensions of about 30 centimetres in length.They were then rubbed down in hot water by women on a large stone of the same material. When dried they were fit for sale.

The stones were mainly used to sharpen the blades of scythes and sickles use to harvest cereal crops. A farm labourer could use two or three a day in harvest time as they often broke and were useless unless complete. A scythe needed constant sharpening, perhaps every quarter of an hour.

Loads of stones were taken to the ports of Topsham and Bridgewater to be shipped to London. Others were destined for the Midlands and South coast ports. Some may have found their way as far as South Africa and Australia.

Many were sold locally at an annual Scythestone Fair held in May or June in Waterbeer Street, Exeter. The hill folk rose early, taking their loads by ass or pony, or in carts. There was an old proverb in Exeter: "All over in ten minutes like Scythestone Fair". Many people would arrive too late to see the hardy families selling their wares by five or six o'clock in the morning. They returned to Blackborough laden with groceries, and then, as they reached the foot of the hill, filled their panniers with good earth for their gardens on the greensand.

In 1878 the Blackborough School Log Book records that no children attended school on 14th June that year!

Legend has it that the mining folk kept to themselves. They were said to speak a strange dialect.Possibly they came from Cornwall or Wales. The Ponchydown Inn was one focus of their life. Whole families were involved in the work, something of a 'closed shop'. Family members might be classed as 'scythestone labourers', 'polishers' or 'sanders'; the latter job,barrowing out the excess rock and sand, was often being given to boys. Needless to say the industry was a dangerous one. Apart from accidental death, men and women often died of a combination of TB (from working in damp conditions) and silicosis (caused by breathing in the `smeech` or fine powder from dressing the stones). This gave them, in the latter stages,a hectic complexion and a distinctive cough which never left them, night and day.

Remains of the mines can still be discerned. The collapsed structures go back into the hill on the lower terrace. They are very overgrown, yet still evocative of a time gone by. The whole hill remains honeycombed with badger and fox lairs, the only epitaph to the families who worked and lived in this hill village.

One of the last living witnesses of the mines was Percy Lane, who died in 1989, and who remembered taking a cart load of whetstones regularly into the ironmongers in Taunton with John Rookley, the last Whetstone miner.

"Lane spoke of winter in the Blackdown Hills
When sharpening stones were dug from sand
And how he went boy like and lit the candles up
While men had left their galleries
To trudge to hovel or the local inn,
Wherein they took their victuals and an ease,
Or wheeled long legless barrows out and paused,
Freshed by the 'scarpment breeze.
'The stones were cut', Lane said to me,
'And passed to women at the water trough,'
Who leaned across and rubbed away
A shape and texture that the mowers swept
In arc across their dulling scythes,
Before they bent their backs again
To swing, and lay another dewy swathe,
Earning their cider jars - and patent weariness.
But swallows came, and miners left the hills,
Put down their digger and their adze,
Picked up their mead rakes in the smell of hay,
Shocked corn around the harvest fields,
Cut mangolds in the mellow Autumn Days,
Until the dusk came early, and the mists
Slid easy by the 'scarp's dark face,
Whereat the mole call came.
Thence to their winter burrows,
Reflective through the gravel paths
Slow strode the Blackborough men,
To set their candle poles aright
And light the torches in their galleries.
'I know! I see them yet!' said Lane."

D.V.Rugg