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Antiquities

A length of the Great Western Reave, a prehistoric settlement, three cairns and two field systems on Walkhampton Common

Devon

Walkhampton Common holds the remains of a Bronze Age landscape, with a section of the Great Western Reave running across it. This substantial stone boundary, built in prehistoric times, divides the moorland and marks the edge of a settlement area. Nearby stand three cairns and traces of two field systems, evidence of how people organized and lived on this part of Dartmoor when the climate was warmer and the moor more extensively settled.

Today the site is scattered across open moorland, with the reave visible as a low stone line and the cairns as rounded heaps. Walking here, you move through a landscape shaped by Bronze Age communities, with views across to distant hills. The moorland continues much as it has for millennia, though the settlements themselves fell silent thousands of years ago.

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Photo: Martin Bodman (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

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