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Cairns & Barrows

Cairnfield on Raddick Hill

Walkhampton, Yelverton, Devon

Grid ref: SX 5746 7078

Part of Walkhampton →

Main image: Photo: Derek Harper (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

  • Period: Bronze Age (the boundary bank may be of a different date)
  • Status: Five scheduled monuments (Historic England entries listed below)
  • Mounds: 17, from 2 m to 8.5 m long, averaging 0.56 m high
  • Where: The gentle south-west slope of Raddick Hill, 440 m to 590 m from the summit

A cairnfield is a scatter of stone mounds over one stretch of hill. This one, on the south-west slope of Raddick Hill, has 17 mounds, two lengths of boundary bank and a lynchet, in five scheduled monuments. The biggest group is twelve mounds scattered round the edges of two small fields: nine are roughly round, 3 m to 6.3 m across, and the rest are oval, 4 m to 8.5 m long, with an average height of 0.56 m. A lynchet 42 m long divides the smaller eastern field, 28 m by 35 m, from the larger western one, 84 m by 68 m. Three of the mounds have a hollow cut into them, which suggests robbing or early digging.

Historic England reads some of the mounds as burials but thinks most are stone cleared from the ground when it was cultivated, and that the boundary bank on the southern edge is not necessarily of the same date as the cairns.

The five scheduled monuments

Historic England entryGrid referenceWhat survives
1007415SX 57456 70752One cairn 3.8 m across and up to 0.5 m high.
1007416SX 57438 70808One cairn 2.3 m by 2 m and up to 0.3 m high.
1007417SX 57428 70748One cairn 5 m across and up to 0.7 m high.
1007425SX 57547 70826Twelve cairns round two small fields, with a 42 m lynchet and a rubble boundary bank.
1007426SX 57455 70776Two cairns 3 m across at either end of a 12 m rubble bank.

Grid references are from the Historic England entries. Each entry covers one scheduled monument; a monument can hold several features.

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The 5 rings on this map are the separate scheduled monuments that make up this listing, placed from Historic England’s records. Tap a ring for its grid reference and a link to its official entry. The pin marks the middle of the group.

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Guide to Dartmoor, page 161Plate from Guide to Dartmoor, page 161, 1909

“And desolate as Dartmoor is, with thousands of acres now destitute even of a turf-cutter's cabin, considerable vestiges of antient dwellings may still be traced in various parts of the Forest and its precincts.”

Also on Our DartmoorCartridge and Press Rooms — Industrial ruins nestled on Dartmoor where gunpowder was manufactured and pressed during the 19th century.

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