Cranbrook Castle

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1003860) describes a slight single-rampart hillfort on the summit of Cranbrook Down, overlooking the River Teign. It is a square enclosure 160 metres across inside. The north side has a single rampart. The east, west and south sides have a substantial rampart bank with a stone core, some stone facing and a deep outer ditch, and the south and south-west have a further ditched counterscarp bank as well. It lies in the parish of Moretonhampstead, about 2 km south of Drewsteignton.

There are two entrances: a simple causewayed gap on the east, and a causewayed gap on the south-west protected by a curved extension of the counterscarp bank. The differences between the defences on the north and south have been put down to different phases of building rather than to the lie of the land. Baring-Gould partly excavated two hut circles on the east side of the interior in 1901 and found some pottery and part of a rotary quern, though the huts do not show as earthworks. Cairns in the northern part of the interior are thought to be clearance cairns from cultivating the inside. Other remains nearby are outside this scheduling.

Page's An Exploration of Dartmoor calls Cranbrook a fine specimen of the strongholds of our ancestors, on the bold brow of Whyddon Down overlooking Prestonbury, and notes that part of the rampart had been taken for road-mending. He puts the area at about seven acres.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1003860 (updated 28 October 2015), which cites PastScape 445462. The Page paragraph is from An Exploration of Dartmoor and Its Antiquities, page 179 of the Library copy.

• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1003860)
• Grid reference: SX 7386 8901 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)