Historical illustrations of the Devon snow tracks, published in 1855 — Contemporary representations of the tracks, published in the *Illustrated London News* in February–March 1855. Historical illustrations, not photographs.

The Devil’s Footprints: The Tracks That Crossed Devon

FULL INVESTIGATION · FI-017 HISTORICAL MYSTERIES

An archival investigation into the strange tracks reported across Devon in February 1855, the surviving testimony, and the mystery that grew around them.

Key Facts

Location: South and east Devon, England
Date: Principally 8–9 February 1855
Phenomenon: Unusual tracks discovered in snow
Contemporary evidence: Newspaper reports, illustrations and private correspondence
Central question: Whether the reported marks shared a single cause

The Morning After

By daylight, the snow had become a record of something no one had seen.

It was February 1855, and a hard winter had settled over Devon. In the gardens and lanes around the Exe estuary, people emerged to find a succession of curious impressions: small, sharply defined marks, often set one behind another as though made by a creature travelling with extraordinary deliberation. They had the look of little hooves. But whose?

At first, the puzzle might have belonged to a single village. Then word came from other places. At Dawlish, at Exmouth and beyond, people were talking of similar tracks. Some said they passed through enclosed gardens. Others described trails that seemed to end at an obstacle and begin again on the other side. Before the snow had entirely vanished, an ordinary winter morning was turning into one of the strangest episodes in the county’s history.

Imagine following such a line of marks across a field. Each print offers the promise of an answer: a foot, a stride, a direction of travel. Then the trail reaches a wall. Beyond it, according to some of the accounts, the marks appear once more. What would you conclude if you were standing there, with the snow still fresh and no animal in sight?

Explanations were offered almost immediately. Yet the discussion did not settle the matter. The story travelled from parish to parish, then into the national newspapers, carrying with it a name that would prove far more durable than the snowfall itself: the Devil’s Footprints.

The newspapers left behind drawings, measurements, letters and a remarkable dispute about what had crossed the Devon countryside that night. To follow those traces today is to return to a landscape of locked gates, dark lanes and unexplained marks in the snow — and to ask what the people who saw them really witnessed.