For centuries, residents of the isolated hamlets of eastern Dartmoor would carry their dead over the long and often dangerous pathway to Lydford for burial. This path became known as the Lych Way, from the Old English līċ, or corpse; also of course the source of lych gates in churchyards. Such pathways, or corpse roads, existed all over the country. Some, like the Lych Way, became famous for their macabre setting, attracting their own legends and stories. One motif often associated with corpse roads was haunting by a hideous black dog whose howl portended death: on Dartmoor, it is tempting to associate this with the Hound of the Baskervilles: Lydford lies near Fox Tor Mires, which was almost certainly the Grimpen Mire, where the Hound hunted its victims in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story.

Ranging from the Dartmoor Lych Way to Scotland, this talk will look at some of the stories associate with corpse roads, and how we can (and can’t) match those stories to routeways in the contemporary landscape. It will also consider the context of the stories themselves, stories which became popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of rationalism and industrialisation, in which people began to reach for a past which was shrouded in danger and superstition - and yet which provided an alternative to the glaring certainties and inequalities of contemporary society.