Cranmere Pool sits at about 560 metres in a peat bog on northern Dartmoor. By the time William Crossing wrote about it in the early 1900s it had held no real pool of water for over a hundred years. In 1854 the Dartmoor guide James Perrott established the first letterbox here, the start of a Dartmoor tradition that continues.
The legend centres on Benjamin Gayer (also spelled Gear), who was mayor of Okehampton five times in the 1600s. A memorial to him survives in Okehampton church. In the story he was convicted of sheep theft and given an impossible punishment: to empty the pool using only a sieve. He is said to have lined the sieve with sheepskin, which let him drain the water so quickly that the town of Okehampton below was flooded.
He was then executed on nearby Hangingstone Hill, and his spirit was condemned to spin all the sand at the bottom of the empty pool into ropes, a task he can never finish. Moaning heard on the moor has been put down to his labour.
The man is documented, but the sieve, the flood and the spirit are folklore elaborations with no historical basis. The remote setting, a long walk from any road, suits the tale and keeps it alive.
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