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- Period: Medieval or post-medieval (the warren is recorded by 1651)
- Status: Ten scheduled monuments (Historic England entries listed below)
- Mounds: Twelve in these ten entries, out of about 64 on the warren as a whole
Historic England measures these monuments from Trowlesworthy Warren House. They are part of Trowlesworthy Warren, which has about 64 pillow mounds and 40 vermin traps on the slopes of Great and Little Trowlesworthy Tors, between the River Plym, Spanish Lake and Blacka Brook. It is generally accepted as the oldest surviving warren on Dartmoor. One account has land for rabbit farming granted to Samson de Traylesworthie by Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, before 1292, and a lease to William Woollcombe in 1551; more recent work questions a medieval start, and the warren is certainly recorded by 1651, when John Hamblin, a skinner from Plymouth, occupied it. It stayed in use into the first half of the 20th century.
Two of the mounds were built on top of older tin streamworking spoil, which shows they are later than the last tin working in that part of Blacka Brook. Only the scheduled mounds are listed here, so treat this as a sample, not a full count. The mounds near Great Trowlesworthy Tor have their own group listing.
The ten scheduled monuments
| Historic England entry | Grid reference | What survives |
|---|---|---|
| 1014658 | SX 57553 65103 | One mound, 29 m by 6 m and 1.3 m high, on a gentle slope above the River Plym. |
| 1014611 | SX 57509 65001 | One mound, 21 m by 5.7 m and 0.7 m high, with a 3 m wide quarry ditch. |
| 1014657 | SX 57524 65164 | One mound, 15 m by 6.5 m and 1 m high, with a network of narrow gullies round it that was probably an animal run. |
| 1014462 | SX 57288 64895 | One mound, 12 m by 5.5 m and 0.8 m high, with a 6 m gully leading from the end of its ditch. |
| 1014470 | SX 57311 64765 | One mound, 11.5 m by 4.5 m and 1 m high, with its ditch on three sides. |
| 1014458 | SX 57602 64502 | One mound, 14.5 m by 5.5 m and 0.7 m high, with a 10 m gully from the west end of the ditch. |
| 1015754 | SX 57112 65019 | Two mounds: 11.5 m by 4.1 m, partly revetted with boulders, and 5.5 m by 3.2 m. |
| 1015747 | SX 57395 64909 | Two mounds, each 12 m long: the eastern 3.7 m wide with rocks poking through it, the western 5.7 m wide. |
| 1014614 | SX 56669 64292 | One mound, 28 m by 6.5 m and 1 m high, lying on top of older tin streamworking spoil in the Blacka Brook valley. |
| 1014616 | SX 57023 63949 | One mound, 35 m by 5.5 m and 1.4 m high, also on top of older tin streamworking spoil. |
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.
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