Dartmoor Preservation Association
The Dartmoor Preservation Association (DPA) was founded in 1883 to help look after Dartmoor – an area in south-west England which contains some of the finest landscapes in the country. It is one of the oldest environmental or amenity bodies in the UK.
Visit their stand to find out more, and maybe purchase one of their cards, calendars, or other pieces of merchandise.
History of the DPA…
It started amidst concerns that the ancient rights of commoners on the moor were being eroded, and an increasing public interest in Dartmoor’s scenery, archaeology, history and wildlife. The formation of a watchdog organisation was a prudent move at the time and it still has an important role to play today.
For more than one hundred and thirty years the DPA has fought threats to Dartmoor. Its achievements are best summed up in the foreword to a history of the organisation, written by the great campaigner Lady Sylvia Sayer, granddaughter of one of the DPA’s earliest members, Robert Burnard, and at different times the Hon. Secretary, Chairman and Patron:
“We won many battles…and one can walk on Dartmoor today and rejoice to see a central area without a once threatened reservoir, a tor without the ugly radar installation that once disfigured it, a fine stretch of moorland rich in historic sites not buried under a mountain of china clay waste, a sweep of southern Dartmoor without the pylons that the Electricity Board wanted to put there, another moorland free of commercial afforestation – and many other “rescues” in which the DPA played an indispensably leading part.”
