Belstone Common Apple Crusher (Quadrant)

• Grid reference: SX 61555 92553
• What it is: part of a granite pound-stone (apple crusher): a quarter-section of the circular trough, recorded as a quadrant
• Where: on Belstone Common, about 70 m from Tors End and about 500 m from Belstone Tor

A section of a granite pound-stone lies on Belstone Common close to Tors End, where the listing for the tor mentions an abandoned apple crusher and millstones on the slopes. It is a curved segment of the trough, about a quarter of the circle, with a loose block beside it.

These stones belong to cider making. In Dartmoor farms and monasteries apples were crushed in a circular granite trough, the pound-stone, round which a granite edge runner was turned, first by a horse and later, in places, by water. R. Hansford Worth, who recorded them in 1953, noted that the floor of the trough was grooved across its width and the wheel's tread was fluted, so that the wheel was lifted and dropped as it went and the fruit was pounded as well as ground. The job was not finished until the pips were crushed, which is why the whole process was called pounding. The larger troughs were cut from one block; most were made in two semicircles clamped together across the diameter. Later the work passed to pairs of granite rollers.

The stone is on the line of tors that runs from here towards Belstone Tor and the Nine Maidens, and can be taken in on a walk from Belstone village.

Sources: R. Hansford Worth, Worth's Dartmoor (1953), chapter 15, pound-stones, pages 383 to 387 | S. Baring-Gould, A Book of the West, vol. 1, Devon, chapter VI | position from the grid reference above. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography.