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Prehistoric Settlements

Enclosed hut circle settlement near Down Tor

Grid ref: SX 5840 6900

Main image: Photo: Derek Harper, Wikimedia Commons

  • Period: Bronze Age settlement, with later tin working
  • Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1009088)
  • Grid reference: SX 58402 69000

The enclosure lies on a south-west-facing slope between Down Tor and Combshead Tor, looking over the Narrator Brook. Its boundary is a rubble bank 2 m wide and up to 0.8 m high round an oval space 122 m by 94 m, with a later drystone wall 1.4 m high built on top of the bank all the way round. Inside are 14 stone hut circles, all round, between 3 m and 7 m across and averaging 4.89 m, with walls from 0.4 m to 1.5 m high. One hut has two rooms, three are linked by a low bank, and one has a visible doorway.

Tinners later worked inside the enclosure. In the north-east part is a line of pits and spoil heaps, a lode-back working that followed the top of a tin lode; a shaft survives as a pit 5 m deep with three dumps up to 4 m high on the downhill side, dug to reach the same lode at greater depth. The monument also includes a length of leat.

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A close-up photograph from DartmoorPhotograph by Glavind Strachan Photography

“Happily, for a moment the curtain of mist lifted, and I saw on the horizon, standing up boldly, the stones of the great circle that is planted on the crest.”

Also on Our DartmoorVermin traps around Great Trowlesworthy Tor — Five scheduled vermin traps on Trowlesworthy Warren: drystone V, X and Y shaped walls built to funnel predators into a trap.

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