The prison officers' school was built in 1874 for the children of prison officers only. The men had to pay for each child to attend, so in large families, not all children were able to attend. Convicts built the school and carried out the daily cleaning, which included the lighting of the peat fires in the classrooms each morning. They also had to spread and rake screened sand over the playground, then called the parade ground. This continued into the 1920s. The men who carried out the cleaning/maintenance were known as the scavenging party and were chained together with a cart containing their rations. They were carefully guarded by armed officers.
The first parts of the school to be built were the boys' school and the headmaster's house, followed by the girls' school and the infants' school. The school roll was over 270 pupils and teachers were in short supply; the headmaster and his wife assisted by six pupil teachers (possibly older pupils from the school).
The school was handed over and eventually became the Princetown Primary School.

The First World War names are listed on faces of the base below. The Second World War inscription, to the front face of the upper step of the base, reads ‘1939 - 1945’ followed by four names, and on the tread of the step below, the most recent inscription reads ‘2001 – 2014’ followed by one name.
The memorial is surrounded by a granite cobble pavement, octagonal on plan, with eight low pyramidal corner posts, also in granite, carrying a chain.

Originally built in the early 19th century to house military officers, the building fell into disrepair when hostilities with the French and Americans ceased. In the 1850s it was renovated as a hotel and gained a good reputation; the Prince Consort reputedly stayed here in 1852, while the Prince and Princess of Wales visited in 1909, the year before the Prince was crowned George V.   Another famous visiter was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who may have writted part of the Hound of the Baskervilles here. Modernised in the 20th century, it was leased to the Home Office from the 1940s-1990 and was used as a prison officers mess. Taken over in 1991 and refurbished by the National Park Authority in partnership with the Duchy of Cornwall, it was converted into a visitor centre and remains a key building within the settlement.

Thought to be the oldest building in Princetown, the inn was likely built shortly after Thomas Tyrwhitt started construction of Tor Royal in 1785 and has been in use as a public house ever since. Stone rubble wall construction, slate hung and colour washed at the front. Slate roof, hipped at either end of central block, gabled to front of wings. Listed.

In the early years of the 19th Century, authorities sought a new solution to an all too familiar problem: Britain’s prison population was growing and growing fast.

With numbers rising rapidly as a result of the large numbers of French prisoners captured in the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, the tried and tested idea of prison ships was falling out of favour. For one thing, conditions on these large redundant warships, known as ‘hulks’ anchored in Plymouth and other places were increasingly considered unacceptable even by pre-Victorian standards. There also seemed a very real risk that some of the inmates might easily be able to escape, swim across Plymouth Sound and go on to cause mischief in the surrounding area.

A new prison was needed and it was decided the village of Princetown on Dartmoor – a bleak spot some 1,400 feet above sea level - was the place to build it. News of the forthcoming construction of the new prison was a definite boost to Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, a well-connected old Etonian, MP for Okehampton and later Plymouth, and close friend of the future King George IV. He was responsible for setting up the prison and its construction used boulders supplemented by dressed stone drawn from Tyrwhitt’s own Herne Hole quarry. The Foundation Stone was laid on March 20, 1806, although the whole process was delayed by occasional labour disputes and by the inevitable rigours of the harsh Dartmoor weather.