A peal of clashing bells echoes across the hills. Hundreds of rooks roosting in the cemetery trees splutter into the darkness. At 7.45pm on 5 November, St Michael’s church bells ring out in discord across the village of Shebbear, in rural west Devon overlooking the Dartmoor hills. On Bonfire Night here, there aren’t fireworks, there isn’t even a bonfire. Instead, there is a stone.
Beneath an ancient oak in Shebbear’s village square is the Devil’s Stone. It’s a sarsen – a foreign stone not from this area. The boulder is thought to be quartz composite, where the local geology is predominantly sandstone and shale. No one attending the ritual turning of the stone on 5 November is bothered what it’s made of. It’s that the stone is turned that matters.
