or in extent and defensive power with the stronghold of the Pomeroys at Berry. Nevertheless, in the early Middle Ages it must have been regarded as a place of no little strength and dignity, when the Courtenays had completed what the Redverses began."
The keep is planted on a mound that has been artificially formed by paring away of a natural spur of hill; it is approached by a gradual slope from the east, along which, connected with the mound by curtain walls, are the remains of two ranges of buildings, north and south. On the north is the hall, and adjoining it the cellar; on the south guard-rooms and chapel, and above the former were the lord's rooms. A barbican remains at the foot of the hill. The whole is small and somewhat wanting in dignity and picturesqueness. All the buildings except the keep were erected at the end of the thirteenth century.
In the chapel may be seen, cut in the Hatherleigh freestone, "Hie V . . . . t fuit captivus belli, 1809." In the churchyard are graves of other French prisoners. Many were buried, or supposed to have been buried, at Princetown, where the prisons were erected for their accommodation. Recently, in making alterations and enlarging the churchyard there, several of their graves have been opened, and the coffins were discovered to be empty. Either the escape of the prisoners of war was connived at, and they were reported as dead and buried, or else their bodies were given, privately, for dissection.
Okehampton Church was burnt down in 1842, with
