← Browse Tors & Landmarks · Browse the directory
Black Tor stands at 502 m on the north-western side of the high moor, in Okehampton Hamlets parish. It is made up of three large granite outcrops, and the best side of the rock stays hidden from the north-east. The lowest pile has partly collapsed and left a skirt of loose blocks, while the middle and upper piles show repeated horizontal joints. The upper pile has a deep crevice that gives shelter from a northerly wind.
Below it the ground drops to Black-a-Tor Copse, an ancient oak wood beside the West Okement river. The summit is counted among the best viewpoints on Dartmoor. In 1909 William Crossing noted that from a distance the tor looks like a single pile, but from closer in three separate summits can be made out, a triple crown in his words. Black-a-Tor and Blacka Tor are older or local forms of the name.
Four Dartmoor tors are called Black Tor. This is the highest of them, and the only one above the West Okement. The others are near Walkhampton, above Shipley Bridge at South Brent, and on the Ugborough moor below Butterdon Hill.
This is a location on Dartmoor that has a namesake. Read more about this: Dartmoor Places With the Same Name
Contact us if you have information about this listing
Dartefacts is a database of Dartmoor sites with far more close-up detail than we can show here, and it is the best place to go deeper. Dartefacts is free to use, and nobody has to pay to look things up. If you want more, a yearly subscription adds 10-figure grid references, map zoom down to 1:25,000 and lists to tick off the places you have visited, and it helps keep the site going. We would encourage you to subscribe.
Be the first to share a thought about Black Tor, Okehampton.
Share a thought“The simple and time-worn memorials of unchronicled ages, rear their hoary forms amidst the sombre solitudes of the moor.”
Which book is this from?
Know another Dartmoor place, tor or landmark we should include? Suggest a listing, it is free.
Suggest a listing
