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Reaves & Field Systems

Eylesbarrow reave through Brisworthy Plantation

Grid ref: SX 5567 6572

Main image: Photo: Nilfanion, Wikimedia Commons

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1011990) describes part of the Eylesbarrow watershed reave, which can be traced from Cadworthy Wood to Eylesbarrow, about 7.5 kilometres, dividing the Plym catchment from the Meavy. This part runs for about 300 metres through the enclosed Brisworthy Plantation, as a low grassy bank up to 2.5 metres wide and 0.5 metres high. The plantation's beeches grow on and beside it, and in a few short stretches tree damage makes it harder to make out. To the north-east a hollow way cuts it just outside the plantation wall and it carries on across Ringmoor Down. To the south-west it comes out beside a track heading for Wigford Down. It lies in the parish of Sheepstor, about 1.4 km west of Legis Tor and 1.9 km south of Sheepstor.

Historic England sets the Dartmoor reaves in a large system of land division begun about 1700 BC, simple banks of stone and earth marking out territories, some of them tens of kilometres across.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1011990, which cites Fleming, The Dartmoor Reaves (1988), and the Devon County Sites and Monuments Register SX56NE-278 (1990).

  • Period: Prehistoric
  • Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1011990)
  • Grid reference: SX 5567 6572 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)
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Dartmoor Illustrated, page 124Plate from Dartmoor Illustrated, page 124, 1900

“Strangers who have never experienced a real Dartmoor mist are apt to imagine that a map and a compass are all that are required to enable one to make one's way across the trackless waste.”

Also on Our DartmoorAnna Eliza Bray — Victorian author (1790-1883) who lived in Tavistock and wrote one of the earliest full accounts of Dartmoor's folklore and antiquities, in a series of letters to the poet Robert Southey.

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“the country doctor, in hail, rain, snow, or storm, must turn out of a warm bed and ride, often to the dreary waste of Dartmoor, through rough roads and darkness, at the call of humanity,”

Which book is this from?

A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy, vol. 3. Written by Anna Eliza Bray in 1836.

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