You are just up the road from the old Hamlyn's Mill, a 4-storey woollen mill originally powered by streams flowing off Dartmoor. It was once owned by the powerful Hamlyn family. In Victorian times Buckfastleigh had 3 mills with a further 2 in neighbouring Buckfast. In the mid 1960s, the Buckfast Spinning Company (no longer in existence) produced 4,000 blankets a week! If you walk down the hill into the town & turn right beyond Mardle Bridge into Chaple Street, you will come to one of the last working sheepskin tanneries in the UK. Tanning of leather began here in the 12th century because of the plentiful supply of oak - leather was cured using oak bark. The leather industry evolved in partnership with the wool industry - where you have wool you, naturally, have sheepskin. Lime, also produced locally, was used to remove hair from the skins. Today, the hand-finished pelts are of a very high quality & are still used by the Household Cavalry & until his death, Ken Dodd used local wool for his tickling sticks!
Also in Chapel Street you can see 17th century weavers' cottages with their wooden tenter lofts which housed frames used for drying cloth woven from locally-produced wool. The 'tenterhooks', which secured the fabric to prevent shrinkage, is the origin of the expression 'on tenterhooks', meaning to be in a state of uncomfortable suspense!
You are looking for a micro cache at ground level.
You may need tweezers to retrieve the log. Please return carefully & securely.