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Motte with two baileys and a multivallate hillfort at Burley Wood
Grid ref: SX 4960 8741
This scheduled monument combines two distinct periods of defensive construction. The underlying multivallate hillfort, with its concentric banks and ditches, belongs to the Iron Age and speaks to Dartmoor's Bronze and Iron Age settlement pattern. Later, in the medieval period, a Norman motte and bailey was imposed on the site, suggesting the land retained strategic value centuries after the hillfort's original use.
Today the earthworks remain visible in the landscape, though softened by time and vegetation. The overlapping defences tell a story of how high ground on and around Dartmoor drew builders across millennia, each adding their own mark. The site lies within walking country and rewards those with an interest in how the moor has been occupied and defended.
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