A mermaid, possibly once a ships figurehead in the Rita Jones Locker bar, The Highwayman Inn, Sourton.
The Locker bar has been created to look like you're in the boughs of an old wooden ship, and boasts a 'natural' piece of wood in the fashion of a huge dragon/serpent that was dragged from a bog on Dartmoor.
Opening times:
Monday to Saturday - 12:00 - 14:30; 18:00 - 22:30
Sunday - 12:00 - 14:00; 19:00 - 22:30
"The Highwayman enjoys a lonely and dramatic setting. It stands opposite the pretty little church of St Thomas Becket, beyond which the dark bulk of Dartmoor looms against the scudding clouds, bleak, brooding and thoroughly menacing.
Until the mid 20th century this little pub was known as The New Inn, although it was anything but, since the building dates from the 13th century.
In 1959 the dilapidated property came into the possession of John Buster Jones, a Welsh visionary whose previous achievements had included running away to sea when he was 14, and representing Wales at boxing and distance running.
He and his wife, Rita, changed the pub's name to The Highwayman, and set about transforming the modest roadside watering hole into one of the most unusual and imaginatively furnished hostelries in the whole of England."
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"In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish.[1] Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.
The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman, also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry. Although traditions about and sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids, they are generally assumed to co-exist with their female counterparts.
Some of the attributes of mermaids may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been inspired by manatees and similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day, including 21st century examples from Israel and Zimbabwe.
Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in recent centuries, such as in Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" (1836). They have subsequently been depicted in operas, paintings, books, films and comics."
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