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Picture source: Clive Schneidau

The Rising Sun was situated on the A30 and is now in use as a private house.

Early in the 1990’s, a work colleague and myself booked a weekend of B&B at the Rising Sun. Our purpose was to get fed, watered and somewhere to sleep for a few days whilst we attended a weekend training course in DOWSING at nearby Widdon Down. We checked in on Friday afternoon and that evening attended our first session on the theories and practise of Dowsing. My friend was very sceptical and scoffed at some of the information conveyed to us by the trainer. Later that night we returned to the pub for a quick drink and comfort table beds. Next morning we enjoyed a ‘Dartmoor Breakfast’ before travelling to the course venue just along the road. The trainer started the day by giving a pair of dousing rods to my friend, the sceptic, then holding the rods as he had been shown, he was asked to walk along an elevated path running across a field of overgrown weeds and assorted growth. Half way along, his rods crossed over. He looked at us with the clear expression of surprise and “not guilty”! On his return the same happened again, at the same spot. He rejoined us and was anxious to explain that he had not influenced those rods. The trainer took us all into the lower level of the field where we could inspect the side of the built-up path near where the rods had crossed. There, invisible from the path but quite clear at the lower level, was a culvert carrying water from one side of the field to the other. We were all amazed and (particularly my friend) converted to committed dowses immediately. That evening we had dinner then retired to the bar where the locals were keen to interrogate us about water divining. We were novices, with less than 24 hours experience, so our shallow arguments were not very convincing. Then a local hill farmer, Stuart Baker (RIP) came into the bar with a tray of local-made sausage for sale. He quickly cottoned on to what the lively discussion was all about, and intervened. They all knew him and were impressed when he explained that his father had called in a water diviner to the family farm when he was just 6 years old, around the end of WW2. The diviner had asked him to hold one branch of forked Hazel wood. When they found water, he explained, the reaction of the Hazel was so violent it nearly broke his arm ! (In the following months I visited his farm to see the very same source of water, now exposed for over 45 years, still meeting the water needs of the farm.) The locals were convinced, well almost. The pub owner asked us to find two wells that had originally supplied The Rising Sun. We found one in the lounge and one in the car park - both locations confirmed by the landlord. I kept in touch with Stuart Baker for the next 25+ years until he tragically died in a gorse brush fire on his farm c. 2018. I am still dowsing !

Barry Hodgson (June 2022)

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