There were, in Okehampton, no manufacture, no business, no pleasure even, for it had no assembly balls, no neighbourhood. Okehampton was among towns what the earth-worm is in the order of animated nature, a digestive tube, but with digestive faculty undeveloped. Now all is changed. The War Office has established a summer barrack on the heights above it, and life--in some particulars in undesirable excess--has manifested itself. Trade has sprung up: a lesson in life--never to despair of any place, any more than of any man. It has an office to fill, a function to perform, if only patience be exercised and time allowed. But if Okehampton in itself considered as a town be ugly and uninteresting, the neighbourhood abounds in objects of interest, and the situation is full of beauty. Two brawling rivers, the East and the West Ockments, dance down from the moors and unite at the town; and if each be followed upwards scenes of rare wildness and picturesque beauty will be found. It is towered over by Yes Tor and Cosdon, two of the highest points on Dartmoor, and some of the moor scenery, with its tumbled ranges of rocky height, is as fine as anything in the county of Devon. The Ockment (_uisg-maenic_)[21] or stony water, gives its name to the place; the Saxon planted his _tun_ at the junction of the streams, whereas the earlier _dun_ of the Briton was on the height above the East Ockment. Baldwin the Sheriff was given a manor there, and he set to work to build a castle, in the days of the Conqueror. Some of his work may be seen in the foundations of the keep. He took rolled granite blocks out of the river bed and built with them. But later, when the neck of slate rock was cut through on which the castle stands, so as to isolate it from the hill to which it was once connected, then the stone thus excavated was employed to complete the castle keep. Baldwin de Moels, or Moules, was the sheriff, and his descendants bore _mules_ on their coat armour. The castle and manor remained in the hands of the de Moels and Avenells till the reign of Henry II., when they were given to Matilda d'Avranches, whose daughter brought it into the Courtenay family. [21] The Ock (_uisg_, water) occurs elsewhere. The Oke-brook flows into the West Dart below Huckaby Bridge; and Huckaby is Ock-a-boe. The earlier name of the Blackabrook must have been Ock, for the bridge over it is Okery.