Rippon Tor coaxial field system

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1019603) describes part of the Rippon Tor coaxial field system with seven settlements of about the same date, ten cairns, historic fields, two shelters, a Latin cross roughout, two millstone roughouts, an animal pound and prospecting pits, on Halshanger and Horridge Commons. It lies across the parishes of Ilsington and Ashburton, about 1.6 km south of Saddle Tor and 3 km south-west of Haytor Vale.

The fields share a single prevailing axis, cut by transverse boundaries. The largest of the seven settlements is a scatter of at least 15 hut circles along the lower slopes of Halshanger Common, 4.3 to 8.7 metres across inside, averaging 6.9. Eleven have visible doorways, one has a porch and another an annex. The second, on the lower slopes of Horridge Common, has 13 huts among smaller fields of the same system, eight with doorways and two with courtyards. The other five settlements are groups of three huts or fewer.

Half the ten cairns are at or near the summit of Rippon Tor. The summit cairn is 28 metres across and up to 4 metres high, mostly loose rocks. Twenty metres south is a tor cairn, a stony earthwork 7 metres across and 0.7 metres high round a small granite pillar, and south-east of that a mound 6 metres across with a hollow from early excavation or robbing. The other two there are butted by a reave of the field system: the western is 20 metres across and 3.5 metres high, the eastern 20 metres across and 2.5 metres high. Three more lie on the lower slopes of Horridge Common (10.2, 10 and 26 metres across), and the last two are isolated, one 5 metres across at SX 74197455 and one unusual cairn inside a circular enclosure at SX 75807496, a platform 10.5 metres across and 0.7 metres high with a mound 5.5 metres across and 1 metre high on top.

Historic remains include field boundaries on the lower slopes of Horridge Common, some reusing prehistoric ones, and two small shelters, one an open-ended rectangle 3 metres by 1.5 metres at SX 74827470 and one built inside an older hut circle at SX 76307540. Rippon Tor itself was quarried in the historic period, and the roughouts left include two millstones and a Latin cross whose west arm broke during making. A sub-rectangular drystone structure just east of the summit, 8.3 metres by 5 metres inside, may be an animal pound. Prospecting pits on the lower slopes show tinners looked for tin there; the results must have been disappointing, as there are no tinworks. The modern fences, tracks and the Ordnance Survey triangulation pillar are excluded.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1019603, which cites Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities (1991), pages 40, 42, 45 and 47, and fieldwork for the Monuments Protection Programme by S. Gerrard. Sandy Gerrard has dated his photograph of the Latin cross roughout to 1 April 1999 in a comment on the Historic England page; I have not used it.

• Period: Bronze Age
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1019603)
• Grid reference: SX 7527 7481 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)