Merrivale stone circle and standing stone, Longash Common

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1013430) describes a stone circle, a standing stone, a cairn, a fallen stone, a stone alignment and several small upright slabs on a gentle south-facing slope on Longash Common, above the valley of a small stream running to the River Walkham. It is part of the wider Merrivale cluster of nationally important monuments and is in the care of the Secretary of State. It lies in the parish of Dartmoor Forest, about 0.7 km north of Little King's Tor and 2.8 km north-east of Sampford Spiney.

The circle lies in the northern part: a ring of 11 stones, 0.45 to 0.6 metres high, 18.5 metres across. A shallow hollow in it, 1 metre by 1 metre and 0.1 metres deep, probably marks a partial dig by Spencer Bate in 1871 that showed no sign of earlier use, and in 1895 the Dartmoor Exploration Committee dug some hollows near the circle and read them as sockets from which standing stones had been taken. Nothing of those shows now. The standing stone is a granite slab 3.2 metres high, tapering from a base 0.7 metres wide and 0.5 metres thick, 33 metres south of the circle. It may have been a focus for the other features, though a newtake wall close by has probably damaged some of them, which makes them harder to read.

A small cairn lies 5.5 metres east of the standing stone, a mound 3.2 metres across and up to 0.2 metres high with a hollow that may be an early dig. Two stones on edge north and south of it may be the remains of a circle Rowe described, about 6 metres across when complete. A fallen granite slab 2 metres east of the cairn is 2 metres long, 0.3 metres wide and 0.25 metres thick; the Committee stood it up in 1895 but it fell in the early 20th century. A line of four stones runs south for 6.5 metres from between the standing stone and the cairn and may be the alignment Rowe said held five stones. Nine metres west of the standing stone a number of stones show through the turf, the largest 0.35 metres high, and they may mark a second cairn that Rowe recorded.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1013430, which cites Worth's Dartmoor (1981 edition), page 269, Rowe, A Perambulation of the Ancient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor, page 208, Baring-Gould, Second Report of the Dartmoor Exploration Committee (Devonshire Association Transactions, vol 27, 1895), page 86, Bate, 'On the Prehistoric Antiquities of Dartmoor' (Devonshire Association Transactions, vol 4, 1871), pages 513 to 514, Bowman, Single Monument Class Description: Small Stone Circles (1990), the National Archaeological Record (SX57SE9 and SX57SE8), the Devon County Sites and Monuments Register (SX57SE107 and SX57SE24) and fieldwork for the Monuments Protection Programme by S. Gerrard (1994).

• Period: Bronze Age
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1013430)
• Grid reference: SX 5535 7460 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)