Fly Navy!

Regular readers my have gathered that I really like aircraft.

I mean, I like aircraft a lot.

I like aircraft to the point that Mrs Snail has been known to decide against a potential campsite because it was too near either an active airfield or an air museum and she knew that if we stayed there I'd essentially do noting but watch planes for the duration of our stay.

Which is not to say that I don't get to see a lot of aircraft on our travels - because I do. Our favourite site at Grummore/Altnaharra in the northern Highlands has afforded us flypasts by pairs of American F-15 Eagles (not the kind of eagles we were looking for at the time, but I was pleased to see them), Typhoons, Tornados and C-130 Hercules planes. Our regular stop at Bunree just south of Fort William has also afforded us close up views of RAF planes and helicopters from the RAF, Royal Navy and HM Coastguard. And of course if you read the recent post about Glastonbury Tor you know that I was treated to a show by three Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters operating from the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton about thirteen miles south of the iconic hillock.*

And you see, the thing is that Yeovilton is not just an active Naval Air Station, where all manner of aircraft operated by the Royal Navy** can be seen going about their daily operations, it is also the home of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Museum. A place where the history of Royal Naval Aviation is recorded, explained and celebrated.

I was going to drive all that way and not take a look?

Not bloody likely!

So, off we went. the deal was simple. Mrs Snail would agree to spend a morning tolerating me drooling over planes and helicopters if in the afternoon we went and visited Thomas Hardy's Cottage, which is maintained by the National Trust, open to the public and located not all that far away.

We arrived at the Air Station just before the Museum opened at ten o'clock. It was easy to find and the massive car park meant that parking was no problem whatsoever, which meant we were through the entrance hall and into the displays literally as the doors opened. For an aircraft nut like me it was like walking into a toyshop with all the very best toys. I would have been more than happy just wandering aimlessly around staring open mouthed at the historic naval aircraft - from the slightly battered fuselage of a Short 184 (the oldest naval aircraft in the world) to the mighty Sea Harrier - the last truly naval fixed wing aircraft flown by the Fleet Air Arm, and all points in between.

Didn't do that though, because just as we were about to sally forth into the displays we noticed a sign informing us that if we hung around for about a quarter of an hour there would be a free guided tour of the exhibits. So we waited.

Well worth the wait.

Our guide was knowledgeable, enthusiastic and entertaining - he'd flown in Buccaneer's back in the nineteen seventies and his love not only of flying, but of the Royal Navy as a whole shone through his descriptions of the aircraft and the ships they operated from and we learned a lot.

Our guide took us around the first two exhibition halls and showed us models of Aircraft Carriers from the Second World War using them to explain why angled flight decks were such an important development in the post war years*** as well as the reason the Royal Navy has returned to linear flight decks for its carriers since the eighties.**** He showed us planes that operated in the First World War, before the Royal Naval Air Service merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the RAF, and planes from the Second World War, such as the beautiful Seafire, the maritime version of the Spitfire, and the venerable Swordfish - a biplane which served with some distinction as a torpedo bomber.

I could go on, but essentially what you'd get is a long list of all the types of aircraft featured in the museum. I'd enjoy writing that, but I accept that it might not make the most gripping reading.

So, suffice to say that we enjoyed the tour immensely.

At this point I would normally share some pictures of these wonderful airframes. I took a lot. Trouble is, I can't find them anywhere. This is particularly disappointing because of what we went to look at after the tour.

Our wonderful guide ended our tour at the entrance to exhibition hall three - the home of the "Aircraft Carrier Experience". This is no ordinary exhibition hall. Oh no.

For a start, you cannot simply walk in. No, you have to wait until the helicopter is ready to ferry you out there - it's supposed to be an Aircraft Carrier, after all. You board the chopper with a dozen or so fellow museum visitors, the door closes behind you and you feel the vehicle vibrating beneath your feet. During the short "flight" a brief video announcement fills you in on what to expect when you land, then you feel a mild jolt which indicates that you've landed, the door slides open and you've arrived.

Alighting from the helicopter you find yourself on the flight deck of the Ark Royal one of the Royal Navy's traditional carriers - that is to say, not one of the Invincible class mini carriers designed for the Sea Harrier*****, but one of the big jobs that carried the likes of the Sea Vixen, the Buccaneer and the Phantom. The kind of ship that didn't see the end of the seventies but that everyone to occupy the office of the First Sea Lord since has wanted to resurrect.

The deck area is occupied by several historic aircraft that would have operated from the Navy's carriers over the years - the venerable practical ugliness of the Fairey Gannet, an airbourne early warning aircraft, the sleek lines of the Supermarine Scimitar and the Hawker Seahawk, the huge wingspan of the slightly off centre Sea Vixen and best of all, the menacing bulk of the Blackburn Buccaneer and the raw in your face power of the McDonnell Phantom FG1. There is even an (unsurprisingly disarmed and inert) example of one of the "Red Beard" free fall nuclear bomb that formed part of the Buccaneer's weapons capability.

So far, so ordinary. I mean, "some aircraft in an aircraft museum - so what?". Well, if you're me, being able to stand next to and put my hands on aircraft like this is enough, but I recognise that not everybody feels as passionate about this kind of thing as I do. Don't worry though, because there's a lot more to the Aircraft Carrier Experience.

We'd been perusing the aircraft for a few minutes when a voice over the tannoy warned all hands that the Phantom was about to launch. The lights dimmed. The blast screen behind the Phantom rose from the deck. The twin Rolls-Royce Spey engines lit up with an ear-splitting roar - I may be misremembering but I'd swear the ground actually shook, and then, projected onto a floor to ceiling, wall to wall screen at the far end of the deck we saw a phantom scream down the deck, dragged by the steam catapult and leap over the bow of the ship into the sky.

The illusion isn't perfect. But it very nearly is - at no time did the actual Phantom airframe move, but I'd still swear that I'd seen it take off.

The illusion was repeated a few moments later, as the tannoy advised all hands to look aft, where, projected onto another wall to wall floor to ceiling screen we could see the unmistakable outline of a Buccaneer coming in to land. By the time it dropped onto the arrestor hook and shuddered to a halt it appeared ever so slightly larger than life, before it appeared to taxi to the point where the actual Buccaneer airframe was resting.

Again, it's not a perfect illusion, but nobody standing on that flight deck cared. We could all suspend our disbelief enough to be totally taken in. The sight and sound was almost overwhelming and just felt real.

The voice came over the tannoy again, suggesting that we explore the "Island" - the Aircraft Carrier's equivalent of the Air Traffic Control Tower. I presume the next group was about to "fly in" aboard the helicopter, as by the time we'd made it to the observation level inside the Island there were more people below us watching as the the Phantom took off again.

The Island serves two purposes. First of all it gives you a sense of what life aboard ship might be like. This is important because as you walk around the spacious exhibition halls looking at aeroplanes it's easy to forget that this is a Royal Navy museum. These aircraft did not, as a rule, operate from land with the luxury of three mile long runways. These aircraft and the men****** who flew and supported them were working in cramped conditions on a deck that was never stable with a runway a few hundred yards long.

It also, via a sequence of displays illustrating how this mobile, floating military airfield was controlled and operated, guides the visitor into the forth exhibition hall, which features a Hawker P1127 - an early forerunner of the Harrier, as well as its direct descendent, a Sea Harrier which served aboard HMS Invincible during the Falkland's conflict displayed right on the end of an Invincible Class style "ski jump" as though embarking on another mission.

There are other aircraft too, a couple such as the BAC 221 and the HP 115 that, like the P1127, were seriously experimental in their day, although unlike the P1127 they were never developed into long serving, world beating aircraft like the Harrier.*******

The most interesting - and certainly the most incongruous - aircraft in the hall however is the very early example they have of the BAC Concorde. It's such an early prototype it doesn't even have the now iconic drooping nose for better visibility on take-off and landing. It is undoubtedly beautiful, and standing next to it it's striking how futuristic this astonishing supersonic machine still looks - no mean feat for an aircraft that's been here since 1976.

I remain slightly unsure what it's doing there, mind you. I mean, yes, it's a historic aircraft and a fantastic example of British (and, it has to be said, French) engineering. But it's not exactly a Naval aircraft, is it? I mean, it's not even military.

Yes, a short search on Google will lead you to all sorts of historic ideas about using Concorde as the base for a supersonic bomber, but if that had happened those planes would have gone to the RAF not the Navy. Mind you - it would be interesting watching one of these try to land on an Aircraft Carrier...

Eventually we made our way out - again via the gift shop.

An indication of how good it was? It was now knocking on to late afternoon. Not only was it too late to get to Thomas Hardy's cottage (we still haven't been) we had missed lunch!!!!!!!!!!

Yup. That good.

In all seriousness. If a museum can keep us so enthralled that we don't notice that it's lunch o'clock then that's a pretty enthralling museum. You should probably go.





*Yes, yes, but really, it isn't that tall..,

**Since 2010, basically a few varieties of helicopters. Don't get me started...

***Basically it enables aircraft to land without the risk of smashing into other aircraft on deck. Something so obvious it's hard to understand why they didn't think of it from the word go...

****The last aircraft in Royal Naval service that needed a runway were the Buccaneers and Phantoms that operated from HMS Ark Royal until she was decommissioned in 1978. Since then, everything landing in a Royal Navy ship has landed vertically, whether it was a helicopter, a Sea Harrier or a regular Harrier. Assuming it ever makes it into service the variant of the F-35 that is intended to replace the Harrier will also be landing vertically.

*****And yes, they called one of those mini carriers "HMS Ark Royal", just to confuse things. I don't mean that one. I mean the proper one that was featured in the 1970s TV series "Sailing".

******And in the times we're talking about, they were all men. The Navy has since embraced the twenty first century and women do now serve in all capacities at sea.

*******The Harrier left RAF and Royal Navy service in 2010 after defence cuts. At time of writing however the type is still in service with the Indian Navy, the Spanish Navy and the US Marine Corps.

Ironing a few things out.

Here at Snail Towers we love a bit of history - and we particularly love the older stuff - the Mesolithic through to the Iron Age. One of the first things we did on arriving in South Wales was head off to discover what the area had to offer. There was a pretty obvious first port of call - the famed Pentre Ifan burial chamber which sits atop a hill in the heart of the Pembrokeshire National Park. Of course, we did have to find it first - and that was not an entirely stright forward proposition.  

You see, our Neolithic ancestors were pretty sophisticated whne it came to balancing rocks on top of each other - as anyone who has ever seen Stone Henge will happily attest. They were, however, less than thoughtful in their choice of location for their stone circles and burial chambers. For every Stonehenge and Silbury Hill (handily located by the side of the A303 and A4 respectively) there's a Twelve Apostles, a hefty walk from the road across Ilkley Moor, or Pentre Ifan - which is, I grant you, only a very short walk from the road, but finding the right bit of the road or even finding right road, well. That was more difficult...

I'm sure there is a perfectly straightforward route from the main road, through the series of single track lanes that take you up to the top of the hill to the monument. It's probably beautifully signposted.

All I'm saying is that we didn't find it - and I have to say we weren't the only ones. Having failed to find a brown sign pointing us off the main road, we struck off in what we hoped was the right direction armed with a map and Mrs Snail's famed sense of direction. On reflection, the map was a mistake. Mrs Snail's sense of direction is legendary - which is a good job, because I could get lost in my own living room. She can direct us to a place we've never been before without ever looking at a map - honestly, it's practically a super-power.

On reflection therefore, letting her have the map might have been a mistake. Mrs Snail is not good with maps.

I have to say, the fashion in Wales  - which is also big in the West Country - for having twisty turny single track roads with mahoosive hedges towering up on either side preventing you from getting your bearings doesn't help much. Frankly it's a pain in the arse, and it makes it really really hard to get your bearings.

As a result we found ourselves driving along seemingly endless corridors of green leaved walls with almost no reference points.

Eventually we came to a "T" junction. There were no signs to tell us which way to go but Mrs Snail had put down the map and was reasonably sure that we needed to go left. Just as we were about to another car approached from the right and screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. They paused for a moment looking at their map, and when we pulled out to the left, they followed us.

Eventually, after a couple of miles we finally hit on the smallest brown tourist sign we have ever seen which pointed us to the monument. Picking our way down the single track road, cautiously overtaking the horses from the stealth riding school that almost literally appeared from nowhere* until we reached a bit of road where an assortment of cars and camper vans had pulled into the narrow strip of verge that serves as the Pentre Ifan parking area.

Our ancestors just loved stacking rocks on rocks...

At first glance, Pentre Ifan looks like a strange sort of burial chamber. Mostly because it's clearly not a chamber at all, but a large slab of rock supported on three rough stone uprights, with a couple more slabs of rock sort of loitering around.

The truth is that Pentre Ifan is a mere skeleton of its former self. Back in the day there would have been more massive stones involved in this structure, and the whole thing would have been turfed over, making the structure effectively subterrainian. Over the years the turfs have eroded away and stones have been taken by local people with enough sense to realise that nicking stones that somebody has thoughtfully stacked up near where you want them is a damn sight easier than digging a quarry.

What you see is what remains, and it's still pretty spectacular. From the site there is a beautiful view down to the coast, which may have been a factor - the chamber's builders may have wanted their dead to have a decent view. Mind you, if that's the case they fluffed it slightly because the door of the chamber would have been facing inland, not out to the sea...

After spending some time exploring the site (this doesn't take long - everything there is to see is in these pictures), soak in the atmosphere (not quite as ethereal as Stonehenge, but you do get a sense of history and age) and admire the view we headed back down the hill to the coast road.

Not far from Pentre Ifan along that road is the Iron Age Hill Fort known as Castell Henllys. It's not the biggest Iron Age Hill Fort you'll ever see - you'd lose it at one end of Dorset's Maiden Castle, for example, but size isn't everything, and Castell Henllys is probably the most interesting hill fort in the British Isles.

You see they've been excavating this site since the early eighties, and at some point early in the history of that excavation somebody had a stroke of genius. (Bear with me, there's a longish explanation coming up - if you want to skip past it, just scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "Oi!").

The thing about archaeology is that it's pretty much a destructive process. You find your site, you dig it up and expose stuff which was previously buried. This is good, because it means we learn about the past, but it is also bad, because being buried is what protected the site from the elements. Now, if you have a big stone building you can leave it exposed and maintain it. If you're only left with fancy mosaic floors and whatnot you can either re-bury them or put a roof over the top.

But if you're digging the Iron Age, what you basically find is evidence of things that aren't there any more and so cannot be preserved. Iron age villages were made of wood. So what you find is evidence of where the wooden posts that supported the round houses were, the "drip circles" caused by rain dripping off the roof, evidence of burning where the hearth was and, depending on the geology of the site, possibly the ditch dug beneath the floor so that it didn't get damp (in the way there's usually a gap beneath the foolrboards of a modern house.

Once you've dug those out all you're left with is the site map you made to record where things were. Because you have to backfill the holes, or people fall down them and sue your university. Besides, if you leave a bunch of holes in a field they'll eventually end up collapsing and filling in by themselves, and what use is a bunch of holes anyway?

And that's where the stroke of genius comes in. Oh, hang on, well get the skippers back first, shall we?

Oi! If you skipped the expanitary bit you can come back now! "Hang on," said somebody, "let's re-create the place as it would have been, to better understand Iron Age life and put theories about how our Iron Age ancestors did things to the test!"

I may not be quoting directly, but you get the general idea...

And that, basically is what they did.  Beginning with the rather unromantically named "Roundhouse One" in 1982, archaeologists have painstakingly reconstructed three roundhouses, including the blacksmith's forge, and a raised grain store. Unlike other "Iron Age Villages" dotted around Britain, Castell Henllys's houses are built exactly on the sites of the originals. Rather than backfilling post holes with soil, they back filled them with, well, posts. These are buildings that have, genuinely been rebuilt.

The roped off areas of posts are where other houses would have stood.

We arrived in the visitor centre car park in the mid afternoon of a bleak, rain sodden August day. This should come as no surprise, the summer of 2015 was, after all, relentlessly wet.

Shrouded in Gore-Tex we squelched our way across muddy car park - Mrs Snail wisely chose to don her wellies, I stuck with my sandals on the grounds that they'd dry quick and my feet couldn't get any wetter - and into the attactive wooden building that houses the cafe, museum, gift shop and ticket office.

As you might expect on a day like this, the place was crowded with people who were less than keen to venture out in the rain. For this reason, I could forgive the lady behind the ticket counter for being a little flustered. However, I always find it very difficult to forgive customer facing staff in any business - but especially one that exists to serve tourists - where staff are straighforwardly rude and/or inattentive. This staff member was both.

There was no queue when we arrived at the desk, but we still stood, unacknowledged for several minutes while the woman faffed about writing something in a book. It might well have been important, and honestly I wouldn't have minded waiting if she'd just given us a brief smile and a "Be with you in a tick." but now. She just ignored us with the self satisfied air of somebody who is secure in the knowledge that whatever they're doing is far more important than you are. When she eventually deigned to recognise our presence she sold us our tickets** as though she were doing us a favour with an expression that made it abundently clear that we were lower than something she might have stepped in in a cow field.

I confess, I was tempted to explain, loudly and at length, exactly how unsatisfactory her level of service was, but then thought, "we're on holiday - I'm not wasting time on negativity". So I took the proffered tickets and we ventured out into the rain and began to climb the hill that put the hill in "hill fort".

If you're not good with walking, or very, very unfit, there's no disguising the fact that it's a bit of a trek to the top. There are, I am told, numerous woodland walks and trails. However, as the rain continued to plummet from a sky as grey as Gandalf's hat we paid them no mind and chose to head directly up the wide path which spirals around the hill to the little settlement.

As we approached the entrance we were struck by the earthwork defences that surrounded the fort. I confess that me and Mrs Snail are not the fittest specimens of humanity, but we were more than a little out of breath merely from a leisurely stroll up the hill. If we'd had to do it at a run, carrying an iron sword, and then had to negotiate the eathern ramparts while people behind a wooden stockade were firing arrows and chucking rocks at us?

Not an enticing prospect.

Fortunately, these days the locals are friendly***.

The Chief's House.

We made our way through the gates to the settlement  - past the rather imposing wicker man guarding the right hand side of the entrance and made our way to the closest Round House (don't call them huts), ducking in through the surprisingly low entrance of the "Chief's House". It was truly a revelation, and it made me glad for the deluvian weather.

You see, had we visited on a warm, sunny day, we would probably have had a look around the thatched round house with its low walls of mud, straw, horse hair and dung and thought something along the lines of "well, it seems comfy enough but I wouldn't want to be here when the weather was manky". Visiting on a day of such damp and chilly weather we got a real sense of how effective the round house design actually was - they might look primitive, but they're not.

That squat little doorway was like a portal between the world of cold and wet and the world of the warm and dry. In my ignorance I had always assumed that your average round house was a damp little place. The Chief's house was anything but. Although the walls themselves were low, the conical roof gave the space a real sense of height and space.

Following the standard round house format the centre of the space held the hearth - literally the heart of the house - providing heating, cooking and a little light, although not much, because embers, not flames were the order of the day. Around the fire four low benches carved from whole logs were arranged to allow people to sit around the glowing coals. The woodsmoke from the fire scented the air and rose up into the thatch. Roundhouses have no chimney, the smoke simply rises up throug hthe pourous thatching of the roof, helping to keep the thick layer of straw vermin free.

At the back (if a round building can be said to have a "back" - it was opposite the doorway. You know what I mean) there were a few private "rooms" separated from the main space by textile hangings and animal hides which would have served as sleeping quarters for the Chief and his family. To the left hand side of the doorway was a low table affair, at which crouched a woman in iron-age dress teaching three small tourist children how to make bread iron-age style.

"Now," she said, as she handed them wooden bowls of dough, "you've seen how I kneeded it. The bad news is you have to do that two thousand times..." She went to tend the fire, blowing the embers up into a low flame, while the children kneeded, counting "1,2,3,80,200,500,1500,2000 - 'scuse me, I've finished!"

With a wry grin which most definately said "Kids today, what can you do eh?" the iron age lady collected up the barely kneeded dough and took it to the fire, placing it on a hot slab of rock to cook. Mrs Snail and I ventured off to the next hut, smaller than the Chief's hut, but build to essentially the same design. This time there was a full ring of log seating around the hearth and these were full of people listening to stories around the fire.

The final of the three roundhouses was smaller still. In this one the hearth was slightly off centre, and there was no log benching or curtained off private space, just a low plank bed. By the fire sat a man in iron-age dress who ushered us in and bid us sit at the back of the roundhouse.

Proudly he showed us a pair of smith's tongs that had been made in that very smithy - for this roundhouse was endeed built on the site of the settlement's original smithy and forge. They had been made, he explained, by a graduate student from the University of Aberystwyth who had spent some months working at the forge working out some of the secrets of iron-age metal working.The student had also begun work on a sword, which I held in my hand. It was horribly unbalanced, and cracked down the middle but it may have been representetive of the kind of weapon your average iron-age foot soldier might have wielded.

Back in the Chief's house there was a much finer sword which I was also privillaged to hold (in that I regard holding it as a privillage - they'll let anyone have a go with it). This was shiney and balanced and pretty damn sharp. When you consider that most people in the iron-age didn't know the secret of working metal, those men that did, who could turn black, soft raw iron into hard, deadly, shiney blades must have seemed like wizards. Given the variable quality of swords you can see why the good ones, the ones that caught the sunlight, didn't bend and kept an edge, must have seemed magical. The origins of stories about legendary weapons like Excalibur are all too easy to see.

By now the weather was closing in, and closing time was approaching. Iron-age residents of the settlement were beginning to pack things away, squelching across the muddy grass in animal hide sandals which somehow seemed far more efficient on the slippery surface than my own twentyfirst century "all-terrain" pair. Had the weather been less driech we might perhaps have explored the woodland walks and herb gardens.

But we didn't. Because we were wet enough already.

Time then to head back to modern Wales, which I'll tell you about next time.


*Seriously, nothing for ages, and then suddenly horses all over the place...

** Summer prices:
Adult £5.00
Child £3.50
Concession £4.25
Family £13.50
Young Archaeologist Club members go free when accompanied by a paying adult.

***If you discount the unrepresentetive misery on the ticket desk - and who knows, when you visit she might be in a better mood - or even on her day off!

Dartmoor part one - Doing porridge

I first read Conan-Doyle's fabulous Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was nine, and although I've never been there, Dartmoor has loomed large in my imagination ever since. In my mind there are vast expanses of empty moor, shrouded in mist and punctuated with towering, rocky tors and trecherous, deadly bogs. You know what? In terms of the spirit of these three hundred and sixty eight square miles of mostly empty rock strewn hills Conan-Doyle got it pretty much right.

We were pitched up on a farm on the very edge of Dartmoor, and although when the sun came out the siren call of the coast rang loudly in our ears a day of exploration of this lofty expanse seemed equally attractive, so we directed the nose of the car in a northerly direction and set out to see what we could see. Actually, that's not true. The truth is that we'd come across a reference to what might be the ultimate hidden gem, and we were keen to go and see if it was as interesting as we thought it would be.

So it was that we found ourselves driving into the little town of Princetown, a frankly unprepossessing place that is totally dominated by what must surely be the moor's most famous landmark - Dartmoor Prison. This huge granite edifice looms - and that is the only word to use here - over the town, squatting on the skyline exuding menace, misery and dispair. It's hard to think of a less inviting place, and yet it was the prison that had brought us here.

Well, that's not quite true. We were actually there to  investigate the Dartmoor Prison Museum, which occupies buildings just outside the prison's fence which used to be part of the prison dairy. We drove up the hill, out of the town, past the main gate of the prison itself before turning in to the museum car park. I have to say, you don't get a real sense of the size of the place from there. As you get out of your car and approach the main entrance you  are confronted with what appears to be a smallish stone building, about the size of your average porta-cabin, with a vast array of brightly painted concrete garden ornaments clustered around the door.

Once through the door you find yourself in a fairly dark and haphazard space, surrounded by various handmade crafts and more of the brightly painted concrete garden ornaments.  Yes, like many museums, the Dartmouth Prison Museum has the visitor enter and leave through the gift shop. There are the usual mugs and keyrings which are presumably purchased at the "generic museum gift shop wholesale warehouse" but the craft items - many of which are exquisitely beautiful - are made by inmates. The museum houses many of the prisoner's creations in other areas as well, about which more later...

I have to say, the museum is one of the most fascinating I have ever visited - and we visit a lot of museums on our travels - well worth the three quid admission charge. The first displays outline the history of the prison itself - its origins as a Prisoner of War camp in the Napoleonic wars (it opened in 1809, and I guess that the prisoner made handicraft tradition started then) through the most well known phase of its existence as the ultimate high security gaol - the capacity in which it appears in stories by the likes of Conan-Doyle and Agatha Christie, to its current incarnation as a lower risk "Category C" prison. I hadn't known its security status had been downgraded, apparently because Her Majesty's Prison Service couldn't get planning permission to build a bigger fence.

I know. You couldn't make it up, could you.

There are also displays featuring the prison's more famous inmates and escapees - although most people in the latter category seem to have come to fairly sticky ends - as well as the methods employed by the prison regime to maintain security. I had no idea, for example, that as late as the nineteen sixties they'd had armed prison officers riding around the surrounding moorland on Dartmoor ponies.

There's also recognition of the strong connection between the Prison and the United States Navy, originating with the Prison's original role as a Prisoner of War institution. For two years between spring 1813 and spring 1815 around six and a half thousand American sailors taken prisoner during the hardly remembered "War of 1812" were held there. That's about ten times the number of men the place is currently permitted to hold - all I can say is that it must have been pretty cramped.

Towards the end of their tenure, on the sixth of April 1815, there was something of a massacre when guards opened fire on inmates trying to escape. Thirty-one men prisoners were wounded and seven were killed. They, along with two hundred and sixty four other of their comrades who also died during their incarceration are buried within the prison grounds. Their graves, and their memorial are tended by inmates and prison staff. The museum holds many letters and other items presented to the prison by various ships of the US Navy in recognition of these efforts and these symbols of reconciliation and comradeship are genuinely moving.

There is a much darker side to the museum though, because one thing it doesn't do is gloss over the point of the prison's existence. In its prisoner of war days the prison was a place of mere incarceration. Both French and American POWs had a fair degree of freedom and self determination within the confines of the walls. But once the POWs left and the place became a civilian gaol in 1851, things changed. Like all prisons, HMP Dartmoor is a place not just of incarceration, but also of punishment. As a rule, the men there would rather be elsewhere, and not all of them have been the type you'd happily introduce your sister to, or wish to meet in a dark alley.

To be frank, many of them have been criminals.

Historically, violent or uncooperative prisoners were dealt with in a brutal manner. In the centre of the museum's main room is a large wooden A frame, to which prisoners were once strapped and flogged. The museum also holds a rather gruesome Cat 'o Nine Tails with which these punishments were meted out. Obviously prisoners are no longer flogged in British Prisons, the practice having been banned in 1967 (which seems rather late, although hitting school children with sticks wasn't banned until the mid-eighties, which puts things in perspective a little). According to the internet flogging was discontinued before the ban, as early as 1962, but the museum seems to differ from this opinion, citing anecdotal evidence that prisoners were occasionally flogged at Dartmoor even after the ban.

Not that brutality has always been limited to the guards. The "black museum" section houses a wide variety of frankly ingenious but utterly terrifying weapons that have been discovered by prison staff during searches. Toothbrush handles sharpened to a point, or embedded with razor blades are only the star of it. There's everything from "shanks" to fake guns, knuckle dusters to coshes and all points in between.  My uncle was a prison officer for many years, and the two little display cases filled with such homespun malevolence made me realise the true nature of the risks he faced more than any of the hair raising tales with which he would occasionally regale us.

Downstairs from this section of the museum, in what I assume used to be cow sheds,  is a display of agricultural equipment from the prison farm, and room featuring a life sized recreation of a section of the prison's quarry - from which all of the stone to build the prison, and the buildings which house the museum was taken. Prisoners used to work in the Quarry, but it's been largely disused for many years - presumably because they can't get planning permission to build anything else!

The downstairs section of the museum also houses examples of truly impressive woodworking produced by prisoners. Very seriously high quality garden furniture and doors are available for sale at what would be insanely low prices were they in a garden centre or DIY store. I can't imagine why anybody from the locality would shop for such things anywhere else.  Obviously the manufacturer's circumstances preclude the possibility of any kind of delivery service, so you will have to collect, but if I ever find myself in the heart of Dartmoor again I can well imagine returning home with one of their finely crafted garden benches on my roofrack.

The final room of the museum is back up the stairs, and houses more of the prisoner's handiwork, both legitimate and otherwise. I was particularly impressed by the many boxes and containers made from matchsticks and other scraps. Most had been confiscated from the inmates who had created them because they also incorporated hidden draws designed to hide drugs, mobile phones and other contraband. I think my favourite of these was a coke can, the top of which had been made into a removable lid. The inside of the can had been lined with matchsticks to stop the items hidden inside making a rattling noise if the can was shaken. I found myself thinking that it was a crying shame that the men who had made these things, who were clearly possessed of great skill and ingenuity had not found some way to use their talents to enable them to live a law abiding life. It's sad, really.

Not every exhibit was so nefarious of course. My eye was particularly caught by a brightly coloured, fully functional electric guitar which I would have loved to have taken from its display case and had a bit of a strum on.

Because it is still part of the prison estate and - although this is not explicitly stated anywhere that I saw - I think staffed at least in part by inmates, all photography is banned, which is why there aren't any pictures in this instalment of the blog. I'm sad about this because I would have liked to have shown you some of the beautiful artwork and crafts on display. I guess you're just going to have to go and take a look for yourselves - it really is most highly recommended.