When the 100 Club was founded by Swinscow in 1979 there were still only 101 letterboxes

When the 100 Club was founded by Swinscow in 1979, there were still only 101 letterboxes.Given the sheer quantity of the things now, Annie, Imy and I felt confident of a find. We puffed uphill and looked through the catalogue for likely candidates ‘Sweet Harmony’ proved frustratingly elusive. After 40 minutes, we gave up and began our search for ‘Tramp’s Box’ on the south-east side. After scrambling through spider-web-festooned caves with no success, we moved on to ‘Pooky’s Box’ ‘Pooky has escaped Garfield’s clutches,’ read the clue Ours too. I began to suspect the whole set-up was an elaborate hoax.In sheer desperation we set our sights on the ‘Honeypot Tor’ box. We travelled from a small quarry to a huge flat rock and then took 15 paces in the prescribed direction We spread out and combed the slab.

‘Stop the clock,’ yelled Imy, hopping excitedly.She had found it Our first letterbox. We prised it open and added the Independent to the names in the Honeypot Tor visitors’ book. The box, like all others, contained a rubber stamp, and we gleefully inked its emblem into our notebooks as proof of our success. Invigorated, we found another five letterboxes that day, but none was as sweet as that first discovery on Honey Pot tor.Book: ‘Dartmoor Letterboxes’ by Anne Swinscow ( pounds 3.95 from Cross Farm, Diptford, Totnes, Devon TQ9 7NU). For information send an sae to Godfrey Swinscow at Cross Farm as above(Photograph omitted).

Set on a hillside, peeping out through the trees is the Watts Mortuary Chapel built between 1896 and 1897. It was donated to the village of Compton by the wife of the Victorian portraitist, George Frederic Watts, and she also allegedly designed the building with the help of local craftsmen. It is essentially a small circular chapel with four small transepts, like alcoves, and apparently represents the circle of eternity with a cross running through the centre. The outside consists of red brick and incredibly detailed terracotta.

It’s a mixture of celtic and art nouveau styles, and the whole thing is totally symbolic. There are friezes of doves holding olive branches, evangelists, guardian angels, owls (symbolising wisdom) and the letters ‘I am’ (symbolising God). The main doorway appears to be Norman but is surrounded by art nouveau heads and there is a litle Byzantine campanile above the south transept, like a little dovecot. The red of the building is very vivid set against the green hillside.
The interior is covered with gesso relief work, known colloquially as ‘glorified wallpaper’. You have everything from winged messengers to archangels and the art noveau Trees of Life, the whole walls are covered with an unbelievable richness of colour, predominantly gold and silver. It’s very extravagant and every detail delights the eye.One feels a tremendous sense of peace there associated with English country churchyards but the beauty of the chapel comes as an amazing surprise.David Rolfe is a director with Rolfe Judd Architects, London SW8.

IN SPITE OF years of research by top scientists, there is still no satisfactory explanation for the most gripping mystery of all: why, in television reconstructions, do the actors always have plummier voices than the people they portray? We will probably never know. And there’s something else spooky about Out of this World (BBC 1), a new series in which The Exorcist collides with 999 and Ghostbusters bumps into Crimewatch. Just when you think Alan Yentob, the channel’s controller, has thrown his last dice, out pops another one on to your screen Now you see Pets Win Prizes, now you don’t. Any psychic investigator will tell you that Yentob’s office is either on a leyline, near an ancient burial site, or haunted by the curse of Eldorado. No sooner does a programme proposal come into contact with Yentob’s ideas tray than it succumbs to multiple bleeding, paralysis and internal haemorrhaging before being run over by a bus-load of critics. Then the corpse vanishes into thin air.
But along comes another.