High Willhays

High Willhays is the highest point on Dartmoor and in southern England, at 621 metres (2,037 feet). It stands on the ridge above the West Okement valley, about a kilometre south of Yes Tor, which is only a few feet lower. The Ordnance Survey figures supplied to Page in 1888 give 2,039 feet for High Willhays and 2,030 for Yes Tor. For years Cosdon Beacon had been taken for the highest point, and Page writes in 1889 that recent surveys showed six summits above it, High Willhays first among them.

The cairns on the ridge

Historic England schedules five cairns within about a kilometre of the summit, each with its own record. They are listed here from the top outwards.

• Tor cairn on the summit (Historic England list entry 1010592): two curved banks built against the east face of the summit outcrop, enclosing 13.5 metres by 5.5 metres.
• Tor cairn 180 metres north (Historic England list entry 1010593): a stone-faced bank against the south face of a different outcrop, enclosing 10 metres by 7 metres.
• Platform cairn at Fordsland Ledge (Historic England list entry 1010594): about 560 metres south-west on the spur above the West Okement, a mound 13.9 metres across and 1.1 metres high with a stone-lined pit in its middle.
• Large round cairn below Yes Tor (Historic England list entry 1010595), about a kilometre north: 29 metres across and up to 2 metres high, opened by an undocumented dig, with a small shelter 4 metres to its south.
• Round cairn on Yes Tor summit (Historic England list entry 1010596): 15 metres across and up to 1.8 metres high, between two rock outcrops.

A tor cairn is a bank of stones built against a natural rock outcrop. It is not the same thing as the loose pile of stones on the top of the summit tor.

The pile on top

The conical heap of stones on the highest rocks is not one of the scheduled cairns. The Pastscape survey of the summit, as quoted on the Modern Antiquarian site, describes a semicircle of leaning upright stones east of the summit tor, suggestive of a ring cairn, and says the outcrop is crowned by a recent walkers' cairn that presumably contains material from that feature (field investigation by English Heritage and Probert, 2003). Visitors who photographed it in 2011 and 2014 also call it modern. No source I have found dates the heap or says who built it, so it is best read as a modern pile that may contain older stone.

Earlier records point to older remains here. Page, writing in 1889, notes the almost obliterated traces of what seems to have been a circular barrow, edged with thin flat stones, between Yes Tor and High Willhays, and piles of loose stones near the Yes Tor summit that apparently mark the sites of rifled cairns.

Before you go

High Willhays and Yes Tor lie inside the Okehampton military range. Check the firing times before you set out, and keep out when the red flags are flying. See Okehampton Range for the surrounding observation posts.