Blowing houses, Week Ford

Blowing houses were small smelters where tin ore was heated and refined. The sites at Week Ford are the physical remnants of this process, scattered across the landscape where tin was once worked from Dartmoor's streams and moorland. These monuments sit within the wider story of tin extraction that shaped the moor's economy and environment for centuries.

Today, the site consists of buried and visible archaeological deposits. The name itself records the past, referring to the bellows, or blasts, that powered these furnaces. Walking here, you move through a working landscape where medieval tinners left their mark on the Dartmoor we see now. The ford and the watercourse remain, though the industry has long ceased.

Historic England listed designation: Blowing houses at Week Ford