Clay Tor

• Parish: Peter Tavy
• Height: 436 m
• Grid reference: SX 560 779 (disputed)
• Rock: Granite
• Also called: Claytorre, Claytor Moor, Small Tor
• Status: Site disputed

Clay Tor is a name that Dartmoor writers have fixed on two different places, and not all of them agree there is a tor at all. This listing follows Eric Hemery and Tors of Dartmoor: scattered, split granite outcrops on the steep valley side above the River Walkham, at about 436 m in Peter Tavy parish. Hemery described a pile with no real summit, a core of solid rock and a large spread of loose blocks down its south-east slope. A tiny natural cavern on the south side has been built up a little to make a hiding place for a letterbox or similar cache. The site lies inside the Merrivale firing range.

The doubt starts with William Crossing. In his Guide to Dartmoor (1912) he named the pastures of Crowtorre and Claytorre, below Sandy Ford, and wrote that no tor exists there. Richard Hansford Worth (1953) said Clay Tor lacks a rocky crown. Terry Bound proposed a second site, almost a kilometre upstream beside the river at the foot of Cocks Hill (SX 5693 7810), a group of ruined boulders where a small plaque on a boulder remembers Bob Stewart, who died in 1994. Tim Jenkinson (1996) found Hemery's description vague but thought the site above was probably the one Hemery meant.

So the name is certain and the tor is not. Tors of Dartmoor lists both sites as plausible, and this listing gives the Hemery site because it is a real pile of rock that fits his description.

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