Zoar on the Moor

Zoar Cottages, Horndon, Devon. 14th November 2025.

They came to Dartmoor for the tin,
Scouring the tors for precious ores.
Horndon then a busy mining village,
And there was no Zoar on the Moor.

Then one day came Billy Bray,
Cornish miner-turned-preacher.
On a rock he stood and spoke the Word,
And that was the start of Zoar on the Moor.

The miners converted to the Lord,
A Bible Christian group was formed.
Near Preacher’s Rock, they chose a cottage,
And called it Zoar on the Moor.

The first Zoar was small, unnoticed,
Till Lot fled there for refuge from Sodom.
He found God’s mercy, God’s salvation,
And so it was at Zoar on the Moor.

For sixty years the cottage served
As chapel, house of worship and prayer.
Even after the mines closed down,
Still continued Zoar on the Moor.

The congregation thrived and grew,
Too many for the cottage-chapel.
They built themselves a chapel new,
A bigger, better Zoar on the Moor.

Worship went on for a hundred years
While the population dwindled.
Then no more mining, just scattered farms,
And only the old at Zoar on the Moor.

Horndon today is quiet, remote,
The chapel stands empty, bereft.
The cottage now is a cottage once more,
And just a memory of Zoar on the Moor.

Zoar Cottages is a terrace of four former miners’ houses on the edge of Dartmoor. We rented No. 4, which is a holiday cottage, and I was fascinated to learn the history of No. 3 (photo above), which was used as a Bible Christian chapel from 1837-1904. You can still see the former ecclesiastical window set above the front door.

When the congregation outgrew the cottage-chapel, in 1904 they built a new Zoar Chapel about a hundred yards down the road. It closed down in December 2009, after the attendance had dropped to just five regular members.

This is Preacher’s Rock, where Billy Bray preached and led meetings in about 1837, which led to the formation of Zoar Chapel. He was a Cornish miner who became a Christian in 1823 after a close escape from a mining accident, and subsequently preached throughout Cornwall and Devon. In this photo you can see the terrace of Zoar cottages in the middle distance to the right of the rock.

The original Zoar in the Bible, after which the chapel and cottages were named, is found in Genesis 19. The name in Hebrew means ‘small’ or ‘insignificant’. It was the town where Lot and his daughters fled for refuge from the destruction of Sodom.