Cox Tor

• Height: 442 m
• Grid reference: SX 5306 7618 (summit tor cairn)
• Rock: Dolerite and altered slate, not granite

Cox Tor stands at 442 m on the western edge of Dartmoor, above Tavistock and the Walkham valley. It is not granite: the rock is dolerite and altered slate from the zone round the granite mass, and OS Maps describes it as the second-highest non-granite tor on the moor, after White Tor. The outcrops form an escarpment below the summit rather than a stack on top.

The summit is a prehistoric monument. The Ordnance Survey trig pillar sits on the east side of a tor cairn, a stony bank 32 m across built round a 13 m rock outcrop. It belongs to a cairn cemetery that Historic England records on the hill: two tor cairns, two round cairns and two ring cairns. The ring cairns north of the pillar were dug in 1898 and held no burials. The slopes below carry hut circles, enclosures, cairnfields and field systems, which have their own group listings, linked below.

The small hummocks underfoot are thufurs, mounds formed by frost heave, not ant hills. Three military mortar emplacements on the south slope, cut into a prehistoric reave, date from Allied training before D-Day. The views run across the moor to White Tor and Great Links Tor and on to the Cornish hills.

Eight boundary stones marked R.B. stand below the pillar. They are rumoured to mean Reep Bounds, after a family said to have farmed here, but that is tradition and not documented. The name is spelt Cox Tor or Cocks Tor and its origin is uncertain.

Sources: OS Maps; Dartmoor Preservation Association walk notes; Megalithic Portal; Historic England list entries 1011500, 1011503 and 1020003.