Pillow mound by the Plym, Willings Walls Warren

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1014457) describes a pillow mound on a valley-bottom terrace beside the River Plym. It is a flat-topped, rectangular mound of soil and stone 20 metres long, 7 metres wide and 1 metre high, surrounded by a ditch 2 metres wide and 0.3 metres deep from which it was dug. A narrow gully 18 metres long, 0.8 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep leads south-west from the lower end of the ditch towards the nearby streamwork. Gullies like this are generally taken for drains, but on steep, well-drained slopes some at least may have been animal runs leading to vermin traps or snares. It lies in the parish of Shaugh Prior, about 0.8 km north of Little Trowlesworthy Tor.

The mound belongs to Willings Walls Warren, which has at least 18 pillow mounds on the hillside and valley bottoms between Spanish Lake and Hentor Brook and covers about 113 hectares. It was in existence by 1807, when Lord Boringdon leased it to Peter Nicholls, a warrener from Sheepstor, as part of Hentor Warren, and Hentor Farm is thought to have been the warren house. It is not clear why this part had its own name. Shortly after 1815 it was taken over and worked from Ditsworthy, and it stayed in use until the 1930s.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1014457, which cites Brewer, A Field Guide to the Boundary Markers on and around Dartmoor (1986), pages 52 to 54, the National Archaeological Record (SX56NE135), the Devon County Sites and Monuments Register (SX56NE237) and fieldwork for the Monuments Protection Programme by S. Gerrard (1995).

• Period: Medieval
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1014457)
• Grid reference: SX 5768 6539 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)

Historic England listed designation: Pillow mound 620m ESE of Legis Tor forming part of Willings Walls Warren