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Cairns & Barrows

Cairnfields, field systems and a reave near Cox Tor

Grid ref: SX 5300 7597

Main image: Photo: Nilfanion (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

  • Period: Prehistoric (Bronze Age by type)
  • Status: Four scheduled monuments (Historic England entries listed below)

A cairnfield is a scatter of stone heaps cleared from the ground when it was farmed. A coaxial field system is a set of fields laid out along parallel boundaries, and a reave is the long bank that serves as its spine. Together they show that the lower slopes of Cox Tor and Whitchurch Common were divided into farmed land in prehistory.

In the 20th century the reave was cut by three military mortar emplacements, which Historic England says show the area being used for training by Allied troops in the build-up to D-Day.

The four scheduled monuments

Historic England entryGrid referenceWhat survives
1020005SX 53339 75871A cairnfield of at least 16 mounds (most circular, 2 m to 8 m across, average 4 m) with a short corn ditch and a lynchetted rubble bank, on a natural terrace.
1020004SX 52764 75733A cairnfield of at least 13 mounds, six of them robbed or partly dug, with two hut circles (6 m and 6.5 m across), on a south-west slope.
1020090SX 52265 76208Part of the Whitchurch Common coaxial field system: at least seven fields leading off a terminal reave, with eight hut circles, on the west slope.
1020003SX 52927 75925A reave in two lengths (140 m and 500 m, 2 m wide and 0.6 m high) and three military mortar emplacements cut into it.

Historic England's titles measure from the Ordnance Survey triangulation pillar or from the summit; grid references are from the same entries.

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