The Hairy Hands road (B3212, Postbridge)

OVERVIEW

A moorland road across the middle of Dartmoor, running from Postbridge, with its medieval clapper bridge, west towards Two Bridges. In the 1910s and 20s it had an unusual run of accidents, and the story grew that disembodied, hairy hands took hold of handlebars and steering wheels and pushed vehicles into the verge.

HISTORY

In June 1921 Dr E. H. Helby, the medical officer of Dartmoor Prison, was killed when his motorcycle and sidecar swerved on the road; that August an army officer told the same story of his own crash. The case reached the national press in 1921 and an investigation found the camber of the road dangerous in places; it was altered. Theo Brown recorded in 1924 a woman in a caravan near the road who saw a large hairy hand crawling up the window at night. The journalist Rufus Endle told Michael Williams that hands had gripped his wheel near Postbridge and asked that it not be printed until after his death.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The tradition is specific in place, vague in cause: few versions say whose hands. Dartmoor folklorists (St Leger-Gordon, Brown, Williams) record it as the moor's best modern legend. The accidents are documented; the hands are what people said afterwards.

VISITING

A public road with a car park at Postbridge for the clapper bridge. Drive it as the sign says.