Rock Idols: Dartmoor’s Extraordinary Tors
Saturday 24/05/25, 11:00 – 12:00, Ashburton Arts Centre
Fantastical yet natural, Dartmoor’s 280-million-year-old tors are among the most iconic landmarks in Southern Britain. Victorian antiquarians described them as ‘rock idols’, believing them to be stone deities worshipped by the Druids. Thousands of years before that, they inspired our ancestors who built ceremonial stone rows and circles aligned on them.
In their new book, Rock Idols, Dartmoor locals Alex Murdin and Sophie Pierce pay homage to these flamboyant forms in words and drawings, exploring their emotional power, the myths that surround them and the stories they tell.
They will be joined by acclaimed author Wyl Menmuir whose best-selling books bring us to closer understanding of the elemental forces of the natural world and who is writing a new book The Spirit of Stone, due out next year.
Book tickets HERE
Wyl Menmuir is a Booker-longlisted novelist and author of The Heart of the Woods, and The Draw of the Sea. His keenly anticipated new book, The Spirit of Stone, will be published in 2026. A former journalist for the Guardian and BBC he now lives in Cornwall where he is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Falmouth University. wylmenmuir.co.uk
Alex Murdin is an artist who creates work that connects human and non-human worlds. His commissioned projects are in public spaces across the UK. His new project lithicality.space asks how could we empathise better with stone, a material overlooked yet everywhere we look and literally foundational to our world.
Sophie Pierce is the author of The Green Hill, a memoir about love, loss and the Devon landscape, as well as five wild swimming guides covering the Westcountry, from Bournemouth to Lands End, including Wild Swimming Walks Dartmoor & South Devon with co-author Matt Newbury. A former journalist with BBC South West she has a love of being immersed in the great outdoors and shares this joy in her writing. sophiepierce.co.uk
Featured artwork: detail from Rock Idols’ cover (Hound Tor) by Alex Murdin