Continuing our Sites of Special Sentimental Interest series Martin Hesp has been on the heights overlooking the old market town of Bampton

THERE is no earthly reason why a butcher's wife should not be a philosopher, but somehow – and I don't really know why – you don't expect a woman who lives close to a world of blood and cleavers to be a particularly profound thinker. But on a high sunlit hill recently in deepest Devon, watching 100 wild red deer running across the great, empty, airy downs just beyond one of the region's few remaining ruined farmsteads, I realised there is indeed such a thing as a philosophical butcher's wife.

She was standing right there next to me on Bowbier Hill. Her name is Sally Jackson and the words she spoke up there on the heights above Bampton rang so wise and true that I realised that she had all the insight and perception of an Aristotle or a Descartes.

And this is something I am fast learning about Sites of Special Sentimental Interest (SSSI). They bring out the best in people. They touch a keystone that unlocks the purest of thought. They inspire. They soothe, calm and stimulate. They recharge and renew.

When the wife of Bampton butcher Barry Jackson wrote in to the WMN's SSSI series explaining that the hills above the town were her special place I was somewhat mystified. I drive through Bampton and past its hills most weeks, generally taking it all for granted and barely noticing anything in particular.

The hills are lovely, but they look pretty much like any other of the many eminences we have here in the South West. That someone should have taken them to their heart to such a degree that they would extol their virtues in a newspaper surprised me.

But having been up on Bowbier Hill with Sally and WMN photographer Richard Austin, I have seen the error of my ways. The heights south of town are truly magnificent and inspiring. They offer tremendous views and reveal a deep tracery of river valleys that is a wonder to behold.

To reach them, Sally took us on one of the regular walks she does with her two Bedlington terriers, Poppy and Geordie. Within a few minutes of leaving the butcher's shop in Brook Street and climbing Lower Bowbier Hill above the old quarry – which many readers will have seen has recently been bulldozed and levelled to make way for a new housing estate – we were in another kind of world altogether.

The somewhat muted noise of the town and its traffic had disappeared, and suddenly we were entering an older world. A really ancient, centuries-old tree-lined track parts from the paved lane and heads east up the hill – and this we took to gain the great ridge of Bowbier.

This was where I began to learn that quietly spoken and entirely modest Sally Jackson is something of a philosopher.

"I was inspired by the first story in the newspaper and I'm sure loads of people have got places where they want to sit," she replied when I asked why she had written in to the SSSI series. "It (an SSSI) brings something to their lives and this does to me.

"I come here most days if I can and I just sit and contemplate and get rid of all the – whatever is in my head really – then go back down and face the world. I think we all need a good walk every day to clear out the cobwebs.

"It's just lovely," said Sally, looking around at the great vistas that lay before us – central Devon to the South, Exmoor to the North. "It's… I don't know, very humbling. I'm very privileged to be able to sit up here quietly – and just organise your thoughts and go back and start all over again."

"But what about Bampton?" I asked. I had never really thought of it or its environs as being a place of particular inspiration.

"Most places have got somewhere special and important to lots of people," shrugged Sally. "But it's just a matter of getting off the beaten track, and finding it, to get a different aspect all together. You just get bogged down with everyday things – I think you need this – I think everybody needs something like this…"

We climbed on again and passed the strange and eerie ruined farmstead known as Higher Bowbierhill. The old farmhouse chimney still stands amid the thickets, like a gaunt finger of blame aimed perpetually at the god that may or may not have caused some long-lost family to abandon it. Here and there old farm implements lay rusting in the sunshine as if to remind someone somewhere of happier times when the place buzzed with life.

Now nothing much buzzes up here – save for the massive herd of wild red deer which decided to quit the high fields having been disturbed by three quietly spoken intruders and two well-behaved dogs. You can see them clearing a fence like some giant herd from the Serengeti on the WMN's SSSI video report.

To the North we could spy Bampton snuggling in its great natural bowl. It is one the quietest of all Westcountry market towns, not being on the way to or from anywhere. No main artery shakes its foundations, the rail link disappeared years ago and there's no coast or other attraction to bring people from far and wide.

There's not even a market – unless you count the one held at famous Bampton Fair, which has its annual airing on the last Thursday of every October. The fair is indicative of what the town used to be – a junction, a market centre of regional importance – but it in no way reflects the Bampton of today.

For centuries half of Exmoor would come down from the hills to buy and sell – and they would bring their famous ponies with them. Alas, those days are over and the ponies no longer tramp down to town.

Bampton's importance as a pivotal junction petered out some time ago. The wool trade went the same way, and then – BANG! The last stick of dynamite exploded, the great quarries which pock-mark the neighbourhood fell silent and the old corrugated quarry buildings began their slow, golden march into rusting decay.

Today, Bampton simply gets on with the business of being a small country town without any fuss. It has all the essential shops so locals don't have to travel elsewhere. And it has charming Brook Street with the little clearwater runlets that flow down either side.

"What a lot of people don't know is that running right under this street is a big tunnel called the Shuttern," a local once told me.

"We used to go up it when were kids – huge it was -– you could drive a coach and horses up there, all the way to Frog Street. Go down to the bridge and you'll see the end of it by the river."

At one end of the street Bampton's all-important bridge crosses the River Batherm. Near it there's a black hole in the wall where a tributary pours water into the main stream.

Usually one would link the words "all-important" and "bridge" to conjure images of large and impressive spans, but at Bampton this isn't quite the case. It's a humble bridge, but important nevertheless, because it gives us some clue as to why the town thrived centuries ago.

Bampton is situated on the intersection of two significant trajectories – the north-south Exe valley route from the once important harbour at Watchet to Exeter, and the old east-west southern Exmoor road from Taunton to Barnstaple. Now only the bridge remains to bear witness to Bampton's thriving junction days – along with three toll houses where travellers once paid their dues.

As long ago as Saxon times the town had become a busy centre – a fact given away by many of the local place names. An enclosure was built, traces of which can be seen inside the later Norman bailey to the East of town, and the remains of a field strip system can be detected nearby. Vestiges of the town's Saxon origins are further hinted at by the layout of streets and building plots, and by the almost circular churchyard.

The Normans came and built their motte-and-bailey castle on the site of the old enclosure, and this steep, grassy knoll – with its half-dozen beech trees – dominates the town to this day.

But, for all the history, few of the town's buildings pre-date the year 1645. That was when the rival forces of the Civil War clashed here; the Royalists were so unimpressed by Bampton they spent four days burning it. Their target was the Devon Clubmen – a band of citizens and landowners who had their headquarters in Bampton. Brave fellows they may have been, but armed with clubs, cudgels, and pitchforks, they were no match for the Royalists.

If war did much to destroy Bampton, then it was wool that made it great. The town even had its own breed of sheep: Bampton Notts were once sold in the ancient market as were Devon Longwools, another well-known local breed, and both would have grazed up on Bowbier Hill.

You only have to look at the magnificent St Michael and All Angels Church to see just how wealthy Bampton became thanks to wool. But the trade began to die during the 19th century and after that the surrounding quarries provided most of the employment. The stone was used not only for building, but for roads, railways, and even runways.

The railway arrived in 1883 linking the Taunton-Barnstaple line with Exeter (via a junction at Morebath) and had a large impact on the town, though you would have difficulty finding any trace of it today. The branch closed in 1963, one of the first to feel the Beeching axe.

Years later the North Devon Link Road ploughed its way west to Barnstaple via Tiverton, taking away Bampton's arterial status. As for the other old route, few people today have reason to travel from north coast to south via Bampton. And so there it sits in its valley, off the 21st century's beaten track – cosy, quiet, seemingly untroubled by the noisy, polluted manifestations of the modern age. But it has the hum of life nevertheless and that is what we could contemplate while walking down the ancient right of way that leads from Three Corners Farm into town and that may, for all I know, have once been the main road.

Listening to the very distant boom of traffic that was wafting up from the busy A396 Exe valley road where it passes through a massive deep wooded bend known as Cove Cleave, and Sally mused about the drivers far below. "They are coping with their everyday issues," she said. "And this is my way of unburdening. I said about being privileged and probably humbled – but you've got to imagine that's all people ever did years ago – walk all these ways through these hills and get where they needed to go.

Sally smiled: "They didn't have all these motorways and fast cars and what have you. It's all relative, I think – all to do with how we are and how we arrived at today. It does you good to go back and just think about things a bit slower."

NEXT WEEK: Martin Hesp will be exploring the little known Harbourne River with WMN reader Henry Harris.