Fordsland Ledge

• Parish: Okehampton Hamlets
• Grid reference: SX 5759 8884
• Height: 582 metres
• Rock: granite
• Other spellings: Forsland Ledge, Foresland Ledge
• Access: open moor inside the Okehampton firing range: check the firing times before you go

Fordsland Ledge is a low outcrop on the brow of the south-west spur of High Willhays, about 500 metres from the summit. The granite lies in horizontal beds, and below it a large clitter of fallen blocks fans down the hillside to the West Okement River, more than 150 metres below. Kitty Tor stands across the valley, and Lints Tor sits on its own spur in the valley bottom.

Eric Hemery (High Dartmoor, 1983) took the size of that clitter as a sign that a much bigger tor once stood here. William Crossing (One Hundred Years on Dartmoor, 1902) counted it among the rock piles under High Willes that have the character of tors, and spelt it Foresland Ledge.

Two military range huts and a flagpole stand on the main outcrop. Thirty metres to the north-west is a Bronze Age platform cairn, 13.9 metres across, with a roughly stone-lined pit at its centre that may mark a cist. It is a scheduled monument (Historic England 1010594).

Tors of Dartmoor has a fuller page on the ledge, with what Crossing and Hemery wrote and the views from it.

Sources: Tors of Dartmoor, Fordsland Ledge; Historic England 1010594, Platform cairn 30m north west of Fordsland Ledge; E. Hemery, High Dartmoor (1983); W. Crossing, One Hundred Years on Dartmoor (1902); Treks and Tors, Fordsland Ledge, Lints Tor and the Slipper Stones (2018); Torbagger, Some tors around the roof of Devon (2018).