Mick’s travels

East Dartmoor

Mick Aston goes to Devon to show off some of the prize moorland sites

Dartmoor has always been one of my favourite places. Recently I had occasion to revisit it with some (non-archaeological) friends who had not looked at the archaeology before. So we decided to go and see the honeypot sites of Kestor, Grimspound, Hound Tor and Haytor, all on the east side of the moor. Together these represent some of the main periods of activity and occupation on Dartmoor.

Part of the reason I like Dartmoor so much is that it is both accessible (from where I live in Somerset) but also remote. You do not have to go far into the National Park to feel you are in an uninhabited wilderness. But of course, the opposite is true; Dartmoor has been occupied for a very long time, and the use of the local granite for building has ensured that the remains of houses and settlements, ritual monuments and field boundaries are all very obvious and in many cases very easy to understand. There are few if any other areas in Europe like this.

In particular the prehistoric monuments are clear. Apart from a few neolithic sites like Spinster’s Rock (where the stone chamber survives from an eroded burial mound) much of the moor is covered with bronze age remains. Around the edge are complex land boundary systems, called reeves and remarkably elucidated by Andrew Fleming in a large-scale project undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s. The parallel lines of these systems suggested large-scale planning of the landscape, in many cases ignoring valleys, rivers and granite tors. They are associated with fields and scattered settlements, and between them run roads or trackways. The fields are small and rectangular and defined by granite boulders.

At Kestor well-preserved roundhouses site beside the tracks among the reaves and fields. The house walls, two lines of earth-set boulders with stones between, have doorways looking south-east, the main alignment for prehistoric houses generally, and internal features which are probably bed-positions and fire places. I know of nowhere else in Europe where you can walk through a surviving bronze age landscape of roads and fields still upstanding, and visit roundhouses which only really lack their roofs. It is not difficult in your mind’s eye to populate such areas with young adults, children, animals and crops.

Elsewhere on the moor, beyond the reave systems, there are “pounds” or enclosures, also of bronze age date with lots of houses within them. Grimspound is a fine, if a little restored, example of these – it has a scatter of small roundhouses, a stream for watering cattle and a prominent granite-lined entrance. However, at Kestor the pound with its roundhouse turned out to have a smithy (ironworking) when excavated. This iron age site marks almost the last permanent settlement phase of the moor before climatic downturn and depleted soils rendered the moor useless for most permanent agricultural settlement. The environmental archaeology for Dartmoor seems to show clearly from pollen analysis that the area was formerly wooded, and that a combination of forest clearance and heavy rain leaching the minerals out of the soils (which produced acidic podzol soils) led to its present appearance of upland moorland and bog.

But this is by no means the end of the story. All around the edge of Dartmoor there are abandoned medieval settlements and farmsteads. Few of these settlements were anymore than hamlets of the more important and still inhabited villages beyond the moorland of Dartmoor (such as Manaton or Widecombe in the Moor). One of the best preserved is Hound Tor, a small hamlet of three or four farm units set in a sheltered east-facing bowl on the east side of the moor.

Hound Tor was excavated in the 1960s when a dozen or more buildings were exposed. These consist of large longhouses, with a lower cattle end (or shippon) often with a central stonelined drain, and a family end upslope, sometimes with separate sleeping and private rooms. There are also small houses, and barn/kiln buildings which may have been used for storage and food processing. These buildings were built with granite boulders for the walls and could have had timber and thatch (probably gorse) roofs. Nearby some longhouses have been inserted into circular bronze age houses and enclosures, and some of the buildings butt up to prehistoric land boundaries, showing that the medieval settlement was fitted into an earlier field system with lynchets. All around are remains of the infield field system of Hound Tor, which was worked by its inhabitants and where the cereal crops were grown, in areas marked today by irregular narrow ridge and furrow. Banks of stone and earth called “corn ditches” divided the arable from the extensive pasture in the outfield, preventing grazing animals from trampling the growing crops.

As if all of this well-preserved prehistoric and medieval archaeology was not sufficient, Dartmoor also has a wealth of industrial archaeology. This includes numerous well-preserved tin mills or “blowing houses” where tin was smelted, granite quarries, tramways and water-supply leats. At Haytor, the quarries were developed in the early 19th century (ironically by the family which was associated with Shapwick in Somerset [site of the author’s long-term field project]). George Templar of Stover House near Newton Abbot built a tramway of granite blocks in the 1820s, with a canal below in the Teign valley to transport granite off the moor. He was also exporting white ball-clay from pits in the valley and sending this to the Staffordshire pottery industry. The granite was used in London Bridge, the British Museumand the National Gallery. It is interesting that the view from the gardens at the back of Stover House looks directly across to Haytor on the horizon, the source of some of the family’s wealth.

One visit to Dartmoor is not enough, of course, but armed with Jeremy Butler's splendid series of books, I hope to return again very soon.

Useful books about Dartmoor: Andrew Fleming, The Dartmoor Reeves (Books, Sep/Oct 2008); Jeremy Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities (Devon Books, 5 vols 1991–97); HelenHarris, Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor (David & Charles, 1972); Sandy Gerrard,Dartmoor Landscapes through Time (Batsford, 1997).

More Travels: Dartmoor

Jon Cannon finds the wildness of Dartmoor contrasts with a dense record of settlement.

With 50,000ha of open ground, agriculturally rich in the bronze age and since more-or-less marginal – and thus stuffed to the gills with traces of the past – Dartmoor is elementally empty, yet thick with the traces of past human lives. This great granite upland is (appropriately) shaped like a rough diamond, at its extremities about 40×24km. Rivers fan out from the two areas of inner moor, the northern higher and larger than the southern, which are separated by the only two cross-moor roads, the B3357 and B3212. Dramatic granite tors cling to hilltops.

All this is conveniently circumnavigated by a great ring of tarmac formed by the A38, A386, A30 and A382; from these one usually has to follow highbanked lanes up one river valley or another to reach the moor itself; and then one has to walk. The terrain is sometimes hilly, always tussocky underfoot, but never mountainous; boggy stretches are frequent and fogs can fall swiftly, replacing the horizon with a featureless few feet of wet grass.

Most visitors will approach the moor as Mick did, from the east, via Exeter/the M5. From here the fastest and most direct way west is along the A30, although the Exeter-Moretonhampstead section of the B3212 is more beguiling. Either way, turning onto the A382 and heading down a lane towards Drewsteignton, one quickly encounters the neolithic at Spinster’s Rock (SX 703909), one of only a few such sites within the National Park to retain its capstone. Further east down the Teign stands Lutyens’s granitemasterpiece, Castle Drogo (National Trust, Wed–Mon, mid-March–early Nov; closed Christmas–Feb; check for other variations; admission charge) and iron age Cranbrook castle, one of three hillforts overlooking the wooded river valley; at least another nine lie within the moor.

Following the south side of the Teign back west, across the A382 and through Chagford (a historic stannary or tin-assaying town), we first encounter the open moor at Kestor (SX 665863). In addition to the reave system described by Mick, a rich landscape stretches south and west from here, with five stone rows and other ritual/burial sites around Shovel Down (SX 654858) and Thornworthy Tor (SX 664851). With Roman pottery known from Chagford Common and a mesolithic flint scatter near Batworthy (SX 660866) – one of many on the moor – the area has evidence for human habitation over a remarkably long period. All this is a reminder of what is perhaps the greatest human achievement of all: the creation of the moor itself, in a largely prehistoric process of tree clearance, farming and subsequent growth of peat bog.

South again, onto the B3212 and pick up signposts to Grimspound (SX 700808). The pound lies at the eastern edge of another particularly rewarding area: large summit cairns, hut circles, further stone settings, medieval strip lynchets and homesteads, a rabbit warren of c 1700 and extensive remains of tin mining are spread across Challacombe (SX 693796) and Headland Warren (SX 687811).

Returning to the road at Grimspound and continuing south, pick up signs to Widecombe in the Moor, touristy but still a classic Dartmoor pre-industrial settlement; and then go east on the B3387, nearing Haytor (SX 757770), its industrial remains described by Mick, who also visited Hound Tor (SX 742789) a little to the north.

We are now leaving the dense highlights of the moor’s north-eastern side, but there are still plenty of treats to come. Six–eight kilometres south one picks up the A38, pausing perhaps to see Ashburton or, for a unique medieval/early modern treat, visit Upper Uppacott (by arrangement on 01822 890414, admission fee), a grade I listed longhouse, owned by the National Park.

Ten to fifteen kilometres on from Ashburton we approach the moor’s southern tip, where lies one of Dartmoor’s most complex areas of ritual monuments, including, on Corringdon Ball (SX 669608), the remains of another neolithic chambered tomb and a series of seven parallel stone rows;more such is encountered as one moves over Butterdon Hill (SX 655586).

Parking is not easy in these narrow lanes west of South Brent; but the area is a jumping off point for one of the most archaeologically-rewarding of longer walks into the innermoor. Following Ugborough Common three or four kilometres north along the Two Moors Way one passes the largest round cairn on the moor at Three Barrows (SX 653626) and after a similar distance enters the remote Upper Erme valley. Close to the river, Erme Pound (SX 639655) is only the largest of a wide range of prehistoric settlements here; and, choosing my metaphors carelessly, a stone’s throw away the longest stone row in the world – reaching no less than 3.4km – crosses the river. The scattered remains of some 28 structures associated with tin mining also lie in the valley.

One could camp out here and continue to themain sites on the moor’s south-western side; or return to the car and continue along the A38. To cut a corner and avoid Plymouth, where the A38 meets the A386 to Tavistock, turn off at Ivybridge and head north-west towards Meavy, parking a couple of kilometres east of the village (SX 578674). Here one can do a circuit into the Upper Plym Valley, one of the most accessible of inner moorland landscapes. At Ditsworthy Warren (SX 584662), are remains of the largest rabbit warren in the country, one of several in this area. Just a little further up the Plymis a dense sequence of prehistoric stone settings and settlement sites, including the huge burial cairn known as the Giant’s Basin (SX 593670); the river is lined with the large spoil heaps left by medieval and later tinstreaming. On the way back climb dramatic Sheepstor (SX 565682), and visit the lonely late medieval granite church beneath. One of the moor’s most interesting drives starts a little way north, moving east along the cross-moor B3212 into the heart of Dartmoor, where grim Princetown was built around its prison from1806. Here the High Moorland Centre (open daily) provides visitor information and the Dartmoor Prison Museum (daily, closed lunch, admission fee) offers an insight into the story of a remarkable structure, built to house prisoners from the Napoleonic wars.

To move onto the western moor, pick up the cross-moor B3357 at Princetown and head across one of Dartmoor’s most dramatic landscapes, thick with tors and clitter; there are historic granite quarries and an easy-tovisit complex of stone rows and other settings atMerrivale (parking at SX 553749). After another four kilometres, descend into Tavistock, arguably the most rewarding of the historic moor-edge towns: in the 1860s the tin-rich Dukes of Bedford used the remnants of the town’s stannary and monastic heritage as the focus for a proud series of industrial-era buildings.

North along the A386 one approaches one of the most dramatic sections of the moor: the high tors here do not drip ancient sites like some of the places we have visited – though nowhere on the moor are they absent – but they are worth visiting simply as landscapes. Archaeological highlights include White Tor (SX 542787), just outside Peter Tavy, the site of the moor’s best candidate for a neolithic enclosure; just beyond Mary Tavy isWheal Betsy (SX 510812), the only standing mining engine house on the moor. Throughout this area extraordinary Brentor dominates the farmland to the west: a tiny 12th century church topping a vertiginous relict volcano and ringed by prehistoric earthworks. Five or so kilometres north Lydford retains much of the footprint of an important Anglo-Saxon burh. The castle ringwork is early Norman; the 12th century keep was constructed as a stannary courthouse and gaol.

We are now only 10–12km from Okehampton at the northern tip of the moor, above which towers High Willhays, at 621m the moor’s highest point. Below it are the industrial landscape around Meldon quarry (SX 565924) and medieval Okehampton castle (English Heritage; open daily mid-Mar–Sep; admission fee) with its associated deer park.

Now we are rounding the tip of the moor, heading south-east along the A30, almost back where we began. South Zeal is a medieval planned town that failed to take off, leaving its form all the more visible; Throwleigh Common (SX 651902) has excellently preserved reaves. But these are but highlights: there is more, much more, to the remarkable, empty-yet-packed landscape of Dartmoor.

Thanks to Dartmoor National Park’s archaeology section. Park information centres can provide guides to Grimspound, Hound Tor,Merrivale and the archaeology of the moor.