Brat Tor Stone Workings

On the south-west slope of Brat Tor, below Widgery Cross, there are small stone workings: heaps of broken granite and blocks that have been split by hand. It is small, and no old map marks a quarry here, but the stone itself shows that people worked it.

• Where: about SX 5389 8549, on the south-west slope of Brat Tor, roughly 100 m from the cross. The position comes from a published grid reference for tare-and-feather marks here, and from a visit on 16 October 2026
• What survives: heaps of broken granite, and blocks with a row of rounded notches cut along an edge
• Evidence: the stone on the ground, and a published note of tare-and-feather marks at this spot. No old map marks a quarry here and we have found no written record of one

Tare and feather

Before powered tools, granite was split by cutting a line of notches or holes along the stone where it was meant to break, then driving iron wedges into them: a pair of thin wedges called feathers, with a third wedge, the tare, hammered between them. Tapped in turn along the line, the wedges cracked the block open. The half-round notches left behind on the stone are the marks to look for, and one block here has a row of them.

What the sources say

The Tors of Dartmoor database notes that attempts to split the granite can be seen on the hillside of Brat Tor, where rocks show tare and feather marks at SX 53894 85492 and SX 53707 85807. The first of these is the spot described here. Neither edition of the 25-inch Ordnance Survey map, of the 1880s and of 1902 to 1905, marks a quarry at the tor itself. The later edition does mark a quarry and a gravel pit about 480 m to the north-north-west, near the old track, which are a separate place. In our library of Dartmoor books and reports we have found no mention of a quarry on Brat Tor. No source we have found says where the stone for Widgery Cross, built in 1887, came from.

Nearby

The workings are a short climb from the mine at Wheal Mary Emma and close to the Doetor Quarry that the old map marks beside the farm track below. This area is outside the military firing ranges, but ranges lie nearby on the moor, so check the firing times before you go further.