Cranmere Pool is a marshy land in Devon, England, having a large granite box that contains one of the three officially recognised Dartmoor Letterboxes, the other being Duck's Pool. It could also be said to be the birthplace of Dartmoor Letterboxing.
In a nutshell, letterboxing was originally a Dartmoor phenomenon whereby a rubber stamp with some sort of design on it and a visitors book are placed in a container . Its a kind of a geocaching where once the letterbox is found a copy of the rubber stamp is taken and the visitors book duely signed to verify the fact that they had indeed been there.
In 1854, a person called James Perrott decided to leave a large glass jar on top of a cairn at the pool so visitors could leave their calling cards in recognition of their visit. Future visitors could then see who else had been there previous to them. This idea evolved to include a proper visitors book where people could leave comments of their visits and so in either 1889, 1887 or 1903 a tin box containing a visitors book replaced the glass jar. This soon rusted out and in 1905 a zinc box was used. Now it is replaced by a stout granite box with oak door.
It was sometime in the 1960's that the first letterbox stamp appeared at the pool. Since then, provided it has not been stolen there has always been a rubber stamp and visitors book in the letterbox. Another tradition that has grown up is that if a self addressed and stamped letter or postcard is left in the letter box the next visitor will usually take it home and post it.
No comments:
Post a Comment