BRENT-TOR, or Brentor, a parish in Tavistock district, Devon; on the river Lid, 4 miles N by W of Tavistock r. station. Post Town, Tavistock. Acres, 1,212. Real property, £832. Pop., 128. Houses, 28. The manor belonged formerly to the Abbey of Tavistock; and belongs now to the Duke of Bedford. A remarkable eminence here, bearing the same name as the parish, starts abruptly from an elevated down; has an altitude of 1,100 feet; is seen at a great distance; and serves as a mark for vessels entering Plymouth harbour. Its form is conical; its surface, rocky; and its mineral structure, a subject of much discussion among geologists. A mine of manganese was long worked; but has been abandoned. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £60. Patron, the Duke of Bedford. The church surmounts a precipice on the crown of the Tor; is a curious weather-worn structure, 37 feet by 14½; and is said to have been built by a merchant who, overtaken by a storm at sea, vowed to erect a church on the first point of land he saw.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))