On the morning of 9 February 1855, residents of towns and villages on both sides of the Exe estuary in south Devon stepped outside into fresh snow and found something they could not explain. Lines of small, hoof-shaped prints ran through gardens, across fields and along the tops of walls. They had appeared overnight, after heavy snowfall on the night of 8–9 February, and within days they were the talk of the county — and then of the country.
The prints were small, most about four inches long and three inches across, set in a single file roughly eight to sixteen inches apart. They were reported from more than thirty locations across Devon, with a couple more in Dorset, from Exmouth and Topsham on one side of the Exe to Dawlish and Teignmouth on the other. Estimates of the total length of the tracks ranged from forty to a hundred miles, though nobody could have followed the whole course to check.
What the newspapers actually reported
The earliest known report appeared in the Western Luminary on 13 February 1855, describing marks at Dawlish “exactly, in shape, like a donkey’s hoof”. A correspondent to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette noted that the night of 8 February had brought heavy snow, followed by rain, an easterly wind and frost before dawn — conditions that would preserve prints clearly, and also change their shape as snow partly melted and refroze.
The most influential account appeared in the Illustrated London News on 24 February 1855: a letter signed only “South Devon”, with a sketch of the tracks. The writer described marks about four inches long by two and three-quarter inches wide, eight inches apart, in a perfect single file, resembling a donkey’s hoof. He claimed the trail ran straight, crossed the two-mile-wide River Exe, passed over rooftops and through haystacks, and concluded that “no known animal could have traversed this extent of country in one night.” That letter defined the legend for generations.
It was also an unreliable witness. The writer was later identified as William D’Urban, a nineteen-year-old from Countess Wear who claimed experience of tracking in the Canadian wilderness. The Reverend G. M. Musgrave wrote in at once to correct the drawing, and other contemporary reports told a messier story: the prints were not uniform at all. Sizes ranged from an inch and a half to two and three-quarter inches wide, strides varied from eight to sixteen inches, some marks were cloven and some whole, and some showed claw marks. The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of 17 February described prints alternating “like the steps of a man”, within two parallel lines six inches apart — not the single-file line of the famous sketch.
There is also far less direct evidence than the legend suggests. The only known surviving documents were found after an article in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association in 1950 asked for further information. What turned up was a small collection assembled by the Reverend Henry Thomas Ellacombe, vicar of Clyst St George: letters, tracings and a draft letter marked “not for publication”. Researcher Mike Dash, who gathered the surviving material for Fortean Studies in 1994, concluded that the direct evidence comes from “two clergymen, a doctor and a young gentleman”, supported by newspaper reports and recollections written down years later. Modern analysis also notes that nobody tracked the prints for anything like a hundred miles; the longest continuous trail verifiable from the record is about five miles, from Dawlish churchyard to Oaklands. The hundred-mile figure was an estimate made by adding together reports from different towns.
The explanations, from badgers to balloons
Natural explanations were offered within weeks. In a letter published on 3 March 1855, the naturalist Richard Owen argued that the prints came from a badger, “almost the only plantigrade quadruped we have in this island.” Others suggested donkeys and ponies, and the rodent theory — that hopping wood mice leave a print resembling a cloven hoof — was proposed as early as March 1855.
The most colourful explanation arrived much later. In 1985, the author Geoffrey Household passed on an account from a local man, Major Carter, whose grandfather had worked at Devonport Dockyard. Carter claimed that an experimental balloon had been released there by mistake, trailing two shackles on the ends of its mooring ropes, and that it had broken conservatories and greenhouses before coming down at Honiton — after which the matter was hushed up. Sceptics ask how trailing ropes could zigzag across gardens and roofs for miles without snagging on a tree, and there is no documentary evidence for the balloon at all: the story rests entirely on Carter’s family recollection, more than a century after the event.
Dash’s conclusion was that there was no single source for the hoofmarks: some tracks were probably hoaxes, some were made by common animals such as donkeys and ponies, and some by wood mice. He admitted, though, that these explanations cannot account for all the reported marks, writing that “the mystery remains.”
What the evidence says
- Documented: On the morning of 9 February 1855, hoof-like marks in fresh snow were reported at many places on both sides of the Exe estuary in south Devon, including Exmouth, Topsham, Lympstone, Dawlish and Teignmouth; newspapers reported the finds from 13 February onwards.
- Documented: The prints varied considerably — roughly 1.5 to 2.75 inches wide, 3.5 to 4 inches long, with strides of 8 to 16 inches — and were not the uniform single-file trail shown in the famous Illustrated London News sketch of 24 February 1855.
- Documented: The naturalist Richard Owen proposed a badger as the cause in March 1855, and a rodent explanation was suggested in the same month; Mike Dash’s 1994 collation of the surviving sources concluded there was no single source for the marks.
- Claimed, not proven: That one creature or object made a single continuous trail of 40 to 100 miles in one night, crossed the River Exe, and passed over rooftops. Nobody tracked such a trail, and the longest verifiable continuous stretch is about five miles.
- Claimed, not proven: The runaway-balloon explanation, which rests on a family recollection reported by Geoffrey Household in 1985, with no supporting documents; and the suggestion that the marks were the Devil’s, which was contemporary superstition, not evidence.
- Estimated, not exact: The 40-to-100-mile total distance, an estimate made by adding together reports from different towns rather than a measured trail.
A winter morning, still unexplained
Something left marks in the Devon snow in February 1855. Whether they were the work of mice and donkeys, of pranksters, or of a runaway balloon, the record is too thin to say — and that thinness is itself the lesson: a mystery can outgrow its evidence, and it can take a century before anyone goes back to check.