Exmoor.-- par., partly in Devon but chiefly in Somerset, 20,765 ac., pop. 313; is a wild tract of moorland, with deep romantic glens, reaching in Dunkery Beacon an elevation of 1707 ft. Exmoor was formerly a forest, but is now covered with heath and marsh, or with a coarse moor grass, which affords sustenance to considerable numbers of ponies, red deer, and horned sheep. Parts of it are being brought into cultivation. The iron of Exmoor was worked at a very early period.

(John Bartholomew, Gazetteer of the British Isles (1887))