Gallows Hill

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1007020) describes a bowl barrow towards the top of a south-facing slope above the valley of the River Lyd, at the north end of Lydford. It is a circular flat-topped mound 35 metres across and up to 2.1 metres high. The quarry ditch that supplied the material survives as a buried feature up to 4 metres wide. The name comes from a local tradition that this was the site of the Lydford gallows.

Crossing's Guide to Dartmoor (1914) places a mound called Gallows Hill in a field west of the cross roads in the village, and the Devonshire Association's Seventeenth Report of the Barrow Committee lists 'Lydford. Gallows Hill, a fine tumulus, unopened'.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1007020 (updated 19 October 2015), which cites PastScape 440561. The Crossing sentence is from Guide to Dartmoor, vol 2 (1914), page 50, and the Barrow Committee line from the Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol 30, page 87, both of the Library copies.

• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1007020)
• Grid reference: SX 5120 8522 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)