Hentor Warren landscape

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1019082) describes a landscape that spans all the main periods of Dartmoor use, within Hentor Warren, between the Shavercombe and Hentor Brooks. The prehistoric remains are three partly enclosed hut circle settlements, ten round cairns, a ring cairn, four cists, part of the Willings Walls Reave and a cairnfield. The medieval remains are two farmsteads, their fields, transhumance huts and a small area of tin streamwork. The post-medieval remains are the rabbit warren (pillow mounds, vermin traps and animal runs), a farmstead, fields, shelters, several leats, military buildings, mortar emplacements and slit trenches, peat cutting and a peat rick, prospecting pits and streamworks. The monument is in the care of the Secretary of State. It lies in the parish of Shaugh Prior.

The three settlements are the western, 7 hectares with five enclosures and 21 huts, the northern, 16 hectares with at least seven enclosures and 22 huts, and one on the north-west slopes just below Hen Tor with at least three enclosures and 23 huts. Of the ten cairns, eight lie on the lower north slope of Hen Tor, among them a cemetery of five centred on SX 59306614, and two lie west of the Willings Walls Reave. The cairn at SX 59096577 is 2.9 metres across with a kerb of small slabs and an excavated cist 0.5 metres long. The cairn 270 metres east is 5 metres across with a ring of at least six stones 2.4 metres across and an excavated cist 0.68 metres long. The ring cairn at SX 58376570 is 7 metres across, a circle of edge-set stones up to 0.7 metres high with three hollows inside, two probably the sites of the two cists recorded by Breton, who called it the Ditsworthy Circle. A cairnfield of at least 14 small mounds, centred on SX 59246586, lies beside boundary banks and huts and was probably made during clearance that never developed.

The Willings Walls contour reave is traced from SX 58446554 on the Hentor Brook to SX 59396637 on the Shavercombe Brook, with a slighter branch that may be its original route. It stayed an important boundary into the historic period, so it was refurbished in medieval and post-medieval times, with a vermin trap built across it at SX 58486562 and a pillow mound on it at SX 58716586. Two medieval farmsteads were set up. The northern, at SX 59196635, has a two-roomed longhouse terraced into the slope, a road, a triangular garden 15.5 metres by 15 metres and a farmyard in a reused prehistoric enclosure. The other is Hentor Farm, first named as Hyndetorr in 1375, and still in use during the Napoleonic Wars, so most of what shows is post-medieval. The historic field system covers about 101 hectares, hangs off the reave and was abandoned before 1835, when the Phillips Leat was cut through several of the fields. Peter Nicholls grew crops in fields called Five Reaves during the Napoleonic Wars with a labourer and five pairs of oxen.

Hentor Warren covers about 180 hectares and existed by 1807, when Lord Boringdon leased it to Peter Nicholls of Sheepstor. Its edge is the River Plym on the north-west and five boundary stones, only three surviving, from Spanish Lake Head by Shavercombe Head to Colesmills. After 1815 it was worked from Ditsworthy until the 1930s. At least 35 pillow mounds survive, 8 to 51 metres long (averaging 22), mostly in two clusters, and at least 11 were built on old field boundaries. There are at least eight vermin traps, funnels of walling leading to a stone trapping box, and at least 15 gullies that are more likely animal runs than drains. The Phillips Leat was built by William Phillips about 1835 to carry water from the Plym above the Langcombe Brook, under Little Gnats Head, to his new clay works on Lee Moor, was later used for Hemerdon tin mine, and was abandoned about 1877 when the Lee Moor works took over the former mine leat. Here it survives for 1,525 metres. In the 20th century soldiers trained west of Shavercombe Tor: four mortar emplacements there, earlier called hut circles, a slit trench 240 metres long and many barbed wire stanchions.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1019082, which cites Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities (1994), pages 93, 118 to 121, 123 to 124 and 128, Gibson, Single Monument Class Description: Stone Hut Circles (1987), the National Archaeological Record (SX56NE98) and a long run of Devon County Sites and Monuments Register records (SX56NE56, 58, 126, 146, 156, 229 and 249, among others). Comments on the Historic England page include Sandy Gerrard's photographs of the field system and of the cairn at SX 58376570, a note from a National Trust curator about a Hidden Landscapes talk on prehistoric Dartmoor, and two from Paul Davis; I have not used them.

• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1019082)
• Grid reference: SX 5888 6590 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)

Historic England listed designation: Multi-period remains at Hentor Warren