The Knights of Exmoor

Daniel Defoe, writing in the 1720s, had some very snippy things to say about Exmoor. ‘Cambden calls it a filthy, barren ground, and, indeed, so it is … It gives, indeed, but a melancholy view, being a vast tract of barren, and desolate lands.’ Desolate, almost uninhabited – but far from unused. Until the early 1800s, farmers from the surrounding lowlands used the moor for summer grazing, and from medieval times up to 1819 it held the status of a royal forest, owned ultimately by the Crown. Enter John Knight, an ironmaster from a well-to-do family in Worcestershire.