Artisans of Dartmoor
- Suzy Bennett
- Oct 29
- 3 min read
Words and Images by Suzy Bennett
In her new book, photojournalist Suzy Bennett invites us to meet a community of inspiring craftspeople breathing new life into some of Britain’s oldest and rarest trades.
Blacksmiths and basket makers, plant dyers and potters, woodturners and weavers – over the past decade, Dartmoor National Park in Devon has quietly evolved into one of the UK’s most vibrant craft hubs. Drawn by the moor’s untamed landscapes, abundance of natural materials and deeply rooted sense of community, a new generation of makers are settling into its hillside towns, to breathe new life into centuries-old skills.
My new limited-edition book, Artisans of Dartmoor, celebrates this creative resurgence, exploring what it is about this rugged region that draws so many craftspeople. Through evocative photographic stories and in-depth interviews, the book takes readers behind the workshop walls to meet an extraordinary community of moorland makers – people preserving, reinterpreting and passing on some of the nation’s oldest and rarest crafts. Amongst the artisans featured are Jessie Watson Brown, one of Britain’s last oak-bark tanners, who salvages animal hides to create beautiful leather goods on a farm near Moretonhampstead. Also included is basketmaker John Williamson, who has not only revived a 15th-century Devon basket, he’s made it fashionable. Others include letterpress printers who create their own ‘wild inks’ from foraged oak galls and hawthorn, a natural dyer who is on a mission to clean up the toxic petrochemical industry, and a potter who forages for her clay in Dartmoor streams.
I first became aware of an emerging craft scene on Dartmoor in 2007 when a quest for a curtain pole for a wobbly-walled alcove led me to my local blacksmith who works in a wonderfully atmospheric Victoria forge in the Dartmoor town of Moretonhampstead. Greg introduced me to other local creatives and I very quickly became captivated by their working lives.
My new interest in traditional, ecologically sound ways of working led me to resign from the climate change catastrophe that was my job as a travel journalist and photographer, and instead began profiling Britain’s craftspeople for the national press. It’s through this work that I’ve realised how unique Dartmoor is. Elsewhere, Britain’s craft scene is dwindling, but on the moor, it isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving.
The idea of a book started to take shape, but it wasn’t until November 2023, when my headcount of local makers reached 230 – four times that in 2007 – that I knew it was time to document the life-affirming, cultural movement happening right on my doorstep.
From kitchen tables to stables, Artisans of Dartmoor gives us glimpses into worlds that are normally hidden from view. Sculptor supremo, Peter Randall-Page is pictured in his awe-inspiring studio overlooking Fingle Gorge. We see toolmaker Jordan Harris restore vintage tools in an old milking parlour, while pole-lathe woodturner Sharif Adams creates beautiful bowls in a threshing barn on a working farm near the thatched village of North Bovey.
The book reveals the passion, painstaking care and integrity that goes into producing one-off goods. It discovers how modern-day makers compete with globalisation, explores the profound mental health benefits of working by hand, and discovers why this remote and rugged corner of the UK draws so many creative souls.
An antidote to a world of mass production, the stories in these pages celebrate the ethical and sustainable, the local and original, the handmade and human.
Artisans of Dartmoor By Suzy Bennett (RRP £40) is published by Wild Ink Press.
