carefully engineered to follow a consistent downward gradient to the canal basin, following the contours of the land (although one of the upper branches had a contrary gradient, requiring horse draught in the loaded direction). A siding at Manaton Road may have been used to allow trains to pass when meeting in opposing directions. The Stover Canal had been built between 1790 and 1792 by James II Templer (1748–1813) of Stover House, Teigngrace, for the clay traffic, and was extended to Teigngrace in 1820. From here the granite was carried by canal boat to the New Quay at Teignmouth for export by ship, the quay having been built in 1827 for the purpose, making midstream transshipment no longer necessary. In 1829, due to financial difficulties, James Templer's son George Templer (1781–1843) sold Stover House, the Stover Canal and the Haytor Granite Tramway to Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset (1775–1855), whose family had long owned the nearby large Berry Pomeroy Castle Estate. George Templer left Devon, only to return a few years later and build a new mansion at Sandford Orleigh on the outskirts of Newton Abbot. He became the granite company's chief Devonshire agent. The wooden flat-topped waggons had iron flangeless wheels and ran in trains of usually twelve waggons drawn by around 18 horses in single file, in front for the upward journey and at the rear for the downward. An old sailor called Thomas Taverner wrote a poem which gives us this information: Nineteen stout horses it was known, From Holwell Quarry drew the stone, And mounted on twelve-wheeled car 'Twas safely brought from Holwell Tor. The vehicles used were probably adapted road waggons and were about long, with a wheelbase of . The wheels were in diameter with a tread, and were loose on the axles. The twelve-wheeled reference in the poem above means 'twelve waggons with wheels'. Stover House itself, then the home of the Templer family, had been constructed of Haytor granite in 1781. Granite's popularity as a building material was increasing and the reason for the quarry and tramway's creation was most likely a contract for George Templer to use the stone for London Bridge. Part of the British Museum, the old General Post Office in London and the Waltham Monument in Ludgate Circus were built of Haytor granite in the 19th century. The last use of Haytor quarried granite was the