A new exhibition exploring the secret lives of Dartmoor’s tors will be coming to the visitor centre in Princetown this April.

Created by local artist, Alex Murdin, ‘Rock Idols: the secret lives of Dartmoor’s tors’ captures the signs of life through a set of illustrations.

The show contains all the artwork from the new book, also called Rock Idols, which is a co-production between Alex and his writer wife Sophie Pierce, who have lived locally for 25 years.

Alex said: “People think tors are cold and still, but they are very lively, it’s just we can’t see them moving because they exist on a timescale so different to ours. They are certainly alive in our imaginations and have been the basis of so many of Dartmoor’s myths and legends – the Devil at Dewerstone, Old Crockern at Crockern Tor and Vixiana at Vixen Tor to name a few.”

Alex and Sophie will be doing a talk about their project at Princetown Visitor Centre on Sunday, April 6 at 11.30am.

The book is their personal response to Dartmoor’s extraordinary landscape, as well as a guide to the reader, delving into the moor’s geology, archaeology, folklore, nature and social history.

By reviving the term Rock Idols, which was used by Victorian writers, Alex and Sophie want to reignite people’s fascination with these extraordinary natural monoliths which are unique to Dartmoor. They also want to pay homage to the wonderful illustrated guidebooks of the past by authors such as Samuel Rowe and William Crossing.

The drawings form part of a body of work that Alex is doing about the rock forms of Dartmoor.

He has another, ongoing project A Thousand Stones, drawing all the stones of the Erme Valley Stone Row, the longest Bronze Age row in the world, and is also currently collaborating on a project with archaeologist Alan Endacott, drawing new prehistoric finds in north east Dartmoor.