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Hut circle near Sharp Tor, Widecombe

Grid ref: SX 6822 7336

Main image: Photo: Crispin Purdye, Wikimedia Commons

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1003280) describes a stone hut circle within the Bronze Age Dartmeet coaxial field system, which covers more than 3000 hectares and is recognised as the best preserved example in England. The building is terraced into the hillslope, with a substantial double upright-stone wall around a circular inside 12 metres across. The wall is up to 3.4 metres wide and 2 metres high, and the doorway faces south-east. It lies in the parish of Widecombe in the Moor, about 0.8 km south-east of Yar Tor and 1.9 km west of Ponsworthy.

A small circular rubble-built structure, 3 metres across inside, is attached to the inner face of the north wall. The hut is attached to a length of reave, and another length of boundary wall leads a short way south-east. Other remains nearby, some scheduled and some not, are outside this scheduling.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1003280 (updated 5 November 2015), which cites Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, vol 1 (1991), map 12, and PastScape 442892.

  • Period: Bronze Age
  • Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1003280)
  • Grid reference: SX 6822 7336 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)
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A Book of Dartmoor, page 103Plate from A Book of Dartmoor, page 103, 1900

“the country around as far as the eye extends is one uneven barren and dreary waste, not a tree Shrub or scarce a plant is seen for many miles around, here and there appears a miserable thatched Cottage whose outward appearance bespeaks the misery and poverty within,”

Anonymous American prisoner of war (copied into the journal of Joseph Valpey Jr.), Journal of Joseph Valpey, jr., of Salem, November, 1813-April, 1815, with other papers relating to his experience in Dartmoor prison, 1922

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