Our latest Site of Special Sentimental Interest (SSSI) is a quiet stretch of water dear to the heart of one WMN reader who recalls when it echoed with industry. Martin Hesp went to South Devon to find out more

THERE'S a dark, bleak, empty moor that you can spy from the main Exeter-Plymouth superhighway that gives birth to a hidden vale which is now the realm of herons and trout and not a lot else. Not long ago the valley of the Harbourne River was booming and roaring with the sound of human industry and endeavour.

And it is the memory of all this industry and endeavour that has inspired one WMN reader to make the river his Site of Special Sentimental Interest (SSSI). Henry Harris, of Totnes, can recall when the fast-flowing but, nowadays, little- known Harbourne played host to all manner of mills that took power from its clean flow – indeed, his wife Joyce used to work in the largest of the mills which is now a big, sad-looking hulk that looms over the village of Harbertonford.

This is the river's capital. In fact, Harbertonford is probably the only place where most of us realise we're rubbing shoulders with the stream – we may even catch a brief glimpse of it in the village as we head south from Totnes on the A381 towards Kingsbridge or Dartmouth. Turn off the main road and head either up or down the valley and you enter another world – a dingly-dell land set deep in Devon's rural idyll where cattle munch lush grasses, where electronically operated security gates hide posh converted barns, and where heron and trout play out their watery chase.

This is a vale of memories – a world that Henry Harris recalls with glee, and yet laments. While exploring the Harbourne with Henry and Joyce recently I heard him sigh time and again as he pointed out some change or other.

"Hasn't it grown in…" he kept saying as we pottered down the narrow lanes now bordered by thick hedges and high trees.

Like so much of the British landscape, Harbourne-country has that overgrown look that belies the labours of centuries of hedge-layers, charcoal burners, coppicers, hurdle-makers and farmhands.

"There was a mill there… A chapel there… That used to be a mill. A leat used to start here… Boats used to come up as far as here…"

Travelling the Harbourne with Henry was like entering a lost world. A busy, jangling world of sweat and hard work. A world in which the countryside was a place of labour rather than of leisure.

He first arrived in the valley as a boy when his parents moved from the Exeter area. "I came to live in Harbertonford on November 5, 1938," said this small, ebullient man as we stood looking at the village's new, attractively laid-out flood relief scheme. "I went to school here, grew up here and was married here. The village has a lot of childhood memories for me."

As for his beloved river: "I grew up by it, played in it, fished in it – people worked by it – there were lots of mills here employing people… At one time years ago it was busy, but the woollen mills have all closed down.

"They used to use the water a lot," said Henry as we walked up past the graveyard towards the big, gaunt, old mill building that dominates the slope to the North of the village.

"It drove the turbines, which drove the machines – a hundred people were employed here…"

The mill was famous for its serge cloth which was used mainly by the military for making thick blankets and hardy uniforms. Joyce can remember working on the looms whose noise she says was deafening.

Henry, who worked in the building trade and who occasionally did jobs at the mill, agreed: "When you were under the weaving shops you could see the floors jumping up and down – the old wooden cross-beams would flex.

"You wouldn't be allowed to build anything like it today – the health and safety people wouldn't let you.

"Harbertonford Woollen Mill was about 200 years old and it closed in 1956," he added. "There were four turbines working off this millpond which is now filled in – you would have been in six foot of water where you are standing.

"The mill leat went up a mile-and-a-half – there was a man who used to go up and down to open the fenders to control the amount of water coming down.

"About three years after the mill closed they had to take the chimney down for insurance purposes – it was felled across the river into the other side across the fields and a builder bought some land to build a house and he used the bricks.

"A sad thing was that a lot of the old workers came and took a brick home – after all the years they worked there, they went home with a single brick."

Later I met a man who could remember the dramatic felling of the chimney. Steve Jane, whose wife also worked at the mill, was there the day they toppled the structure, which was more than 100 feet high.

"I witnessed it coming down," said Steve, who has been secretary of the local football club for the past 48 years.

"They dynamited it right across the football pitch – and when they had the pitch levelled out a few years ago they found a whole load more bricks.

"As it was falling, it sort of broke up," he went on. "At the time the pitch belonged to a Mr Finch, a local farmer, and when he retired he allowed the club to buy the field. We then had it levelled and now we've got one of the flattest pitches around – but we found loads of those old bricks."

Walking back to the very centre of the village with Mr and Mrs Harris we came to the old ford which was part of the highway long before the stream was bridged.

"There have been several big floods here," said Henry, looking at the flood relief scheme. "In 1939 the Harbourne flooded half the village and there have been several occasions since."

In fact, Harbertonford has been flooded 21 times in the past 60 years. The high frequency of flooding and serious damage caused to properties resulted in a flood defence scheme for the village being made a priority by the Environment Agency and Defra.

The £2.6 million programme was completed in 2002 – as you can read on an interpretation board placed at the very heart of the village where there's a confluence of the Harbourne River and the Harberton and Yeolands Streams.

This central area looked a lot different back when Henry Harris was a boy: "There were lots of troops here at the time," he recalled. "The Americans were billeted at Hallwell and Moreleigh for the Invasion and they used to bring their lorries here (to the ford) to wash, and I got to know quite a lot of them. They washed the lorries with a high-pressure fire tender, whereas the British troops just had a bucket and sponge.

"What you are standing on now wasn't here," said Henry, surveying the new landscaping created by the flood relief scheme. "This was a ford to drive right through – and farmers drove their cattle here to water and things like that."

The pre-war countryside was a different place in all its guises – and a century before that it was a lot different again. As we've said, it was groaning with industry. In the early 1800s there were nearly 50 substantial woollen mills in Devon equipped with more than 3,000 looms, weaving mainly serge-type cloth – and half this water-powered industry lay in the River Dart catchments area.

"All up and down the valley there were mills," said Henry. "I remember they used to have corn mills which ground corn for farmers to feed animals – and flour for bread-making.

"I'll take you down the valley and point out the different mills," he said as we prepared to leave Harbertonford, recalling first the large edge tool manufactory of Messrs. Knapman and Son, called Hill Mills situated not far from the village.

"There was another big mill – Crowleigh Mill was open until just a few years ago. Someone reopened it and started making bread – but they moved on and it's closed again now."

And so downstream we went, passing old mills and leats at every touch and turn. There was a mill at Beenleigh, and an ancient farm with its own antediluvian chapel at Painsford – then we were down to Bow Bridge which is where the river begins to turn salty.

This is situated at the top end of Bow Creek, not far from the picturesque village of Tuckenhay where there were yet more mills. The most famous of these was the paper mill which was serviced by surprisingly large boats until quite recently. I use the word "famous" because the paper made here was used for banknotes and to this day the trade refers to banknote paper as "Tuckenhay".

A beautiful mile and a half downstream Bow Creek finds itself swallowed up by a big bend of the River Dart which, in its own moody, muddy way, then carries the once clear fast-flowing waters of the Harbourne off to the sea.

It all seems a long way from the place where those waters sprang to life high on the slopes of Southern Dartmoor. Up at Harbourne Head, above Reddacleave Brakes and Dockwell Hole, there is a lonely soul called the Harbourne Man – at least, that's what some people call him – others know the ancient dagger-shaped menhir as the Longstone.

Whatever you call it, the standing stone stabs its rocky finger at heaven just a few hundred metres from the source of the short but lovely Harbourne River.

And in its own singular way, the stone bears evidence to the fact that even this most lonesome of spots used to be busy with human toil when the ancient folk were doing whatever they did up on Dartmoor. The next dozen or so miles before the water turns salty has seen millers and fullers, weavers and serge-makers, American GIs and even chimney-topplers come and go.

But now the river is silent – or would be if it weren't for the holiday traffic booming at a couple of locations. And this silence is interwoven with the fleeting memories of people like Henry Harris – which makes it all the more important that we've captured the Harbourne and its history as a Site of Special Sentimental Interest.

If you have somewhere special you would like to share, please write to the SSSI Series, WMN Newsdesk, 17 Brest Road, Derriford, Plymouth, PL6 5AA, or e-mail: wmnnewsdesk@ westernmorningnews.co.uk