Pillow mounds around Great Trowlesworthy Tor

• Period: Medieval or post-medieval (the warren is recorded by 1651)
• Status: Seven scheduled monuments (Historic England entries listed below)
• Mounds: Nine in these seven entries, out of about 64 on the warren as a whole

A pillow mound is a long, low, flat-topped heap of earth and stone with a quarry ditch round it, built so that rabbits would burrow in it. Trowlesworthy Warren, on the slopes of Great and Little Trowlesworthy Tors, was run as a rabbit warren. Historic England records about 64 pillow mounds and 40 vermin traps here, between the River Plym, Spanish Lake and Blacka Brook, and the warren is generally accepted as the oldest surviving one on Dartmoor.

The early history is not settled. One account has land for rabbit farming granted to Samson de Traylesworthie by Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, before 1292, and the warren leased to William Woollcombe in 1551. More recent work has questioned a medieval start. What the record does show is that the warren existed by 1651, when John Hamblin, a skinner from Plymouth, occupied it, and that it stayed in use into the first half of the 20th century.

Only the scheduled mounds are listed here. There are many more across the warren, so treat this as a sample, not a full count.

The seven scheduled monuments

Grid references are from the Historic England entries. Historic England's own titles give a distance from the tor which does not always match its grid reference (one pillow mound is titled 210 m east of the tor but its grid reference puts it about 130 m west), so use the grid reference.