Black Tor, Brent Down

• Parish: South Brent
• Height: 322 m
• Grid reference: SX 6805 6348
• Rock: Granite

This Black Tor is a large granite tor of 322 m in South Brent parish, set on a shelf of Zeal Hill high above Shipley Bridge. Several rock stacks spill down towards the River Avon, and a car park at Shipley Bridge gives easy access. A wide spread of loose rock to the north suggests the tor was once much bigger. Eric Hemery noted that coarse and fine grained granite lie side by side in the piles, and that an immense frost-split slab in one of the larger piles looks poised to fall, though he thought it unlikely ever to have moved.

The Zeal Tor Tramway passes close by. It was built in 1847 to carry peat from the Redlake beds, with wooden rails bolted to granite blocks, and it closed in 1872. Its line can still be followed along a footpath. Across the river, Shipley Tor stands where the Avon enters Shipley Gorge, and the enclosure of the former Brent Moor House lies below the tor. The Hunters' Stone, a boulder carved with the names of South Devon Hunt members, stands beside the road between the house and Shipley Bridge.

It is one of four Black Tors. Those at Okehampton and Walkhampton are far to the north and west, and the one at Ugborough is a small, ruined outcrop about 6 km to the south-west, near Butterdon Hill.

This is a location on Dartmoor that has a namesake. Read more about this: Dartmoor Places With the Same Name