Bowerman's Nose

Bowerman's Nose, a stack of weathered granite on Hayne Down, at an altitude of 380m a.s.l.


It is about 21.5 feet (6.6 m) high and is the hard granite core of a former tor, standing above a 'clitter' of the blocks that have eroded and fallen from it.


The view, in the transient light of late afternoon on a winter's day, here looks towards Blissmoor Farm - with Cripon Down and Hameldown Tor beyond.

A local legend relates that a huntsman called Bowerman lived on the moor about a thousand years ago. When chasing a hare he and his pack of dogs unwittingly ran into a coven of witches, overturned their cauldron and disrupted their ceremony. They decided to punish him, and the next time he was hunting, one of the witches turned herself into a hare, and led both Bowerman and his hounds into a mire. As a final punishment, she turned them to stone - the dogs can be seen as a jagged chain of rocks on top of Hound Tor, while the huntsman himself became the rock formation now known as Bowerman's Nose