Cairns with cists near Shavercombe Brook

This is one of several Bronze Age cairns scattered across the moorland south of Shavercombe Brook. Each mound would once have held a stone burial chamber, or cist, built to contain the remains of the dead. These monuments date back some four thousand years, belonging to a period when communities across Dartmoor invested considerable effort in marking and honouring their burial places.

Today the cairns remain as low, grass-covered mounds in the open moorland, easy to overlook unless you know what to look for. They form part of a wider pattern of Bronze Age settlement and burial that defines much of the Dartmoor landscape. Walking this corner of the moor, you are following paths through a Bronze Age world.