Buckland Beacon
tor on Dartmoor, England
Buckland Beacon is a granite tor and conical beacon, near to the village of Buckland-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor, England. It is well known for its Ten Commandments Stones, which are inscribed on its south eastern edge. It stands at 382 metres (1,253 ft) above sea level, overlooking the Dart Valley.
The elevated position meant that it was the location of a fire beacon to warn of danger, and the tor takes its name from this role.
The Ten Commandments stones
Buckland Beacon is famous for a number of the rocks around its base having been faced and cut with the wording of the Ten Commandments.
These were commissioned in 1927 by the land owner William Whitley, then resident at Wellstor, and Lord of Buckland Manor, and completed in 1928. The carving was done by local sculptor WA Clement, who worked directly from the current prayer book.
Mr Whitley ordered the Ten Commandments to be carved after he learned of plans to revise the Book of Common Prayer. The proposed revisions would have aligned the Church of England more closely with Catholic teachings and practices. Whitley was a dedicated Protestant, and opposed the changes.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Buckland Beacon” as tor on Dartmoor, England. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q38251475. Authority coordinates are 50.544, -3.787. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927 and 1928.
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This entry incorporates text from “Buckland Beacon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.