Butterdon Hill (Moretonhampstead)

• Height: 351 m
• Grid reference: SX 75016 88443
• Parish: Moretonhampstead
• Rock: granite
• Standing stone: granite monolith 2.3 m high, base about 1.0 by 0.8 m

Butterdon Hill is a 351 m hill in the north-east of Dartmoor, a couple of miles north of Moretonhampstead and near Castle Drogo. Its summit is a low hump with no obvious high point, and Mud and Routes records a cairn there. Dartmoor Walks lists two cairns on Butterdon Down and a small triangular stone beside the summit cairns, set within a prehistoric reave bank.

The main feature is a granite standing stone at the west edge of the hill, beside a public footpath. Pastscape describes it as a monolith 2.3 m high, tapering from a base about 1.0 by 0.8 m. A local farmer regards it as a rubbing stone, and cattle do use it, but Pastscape considers it too massive for that and more like a prehistoric standing stone. A large triangular slab stands about 40 m to the south.

This is one of two Butterdon Hills on Dartmoor. The other, with the Butterdon stone row, stone circle and cairns, is on the south side of the moor above Harford and Ivybridge.

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