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Saddlesborough hut circle settlement and pounds

Grid ref: SX 5574 6351

Main image: Photo: Derek Harper, Wikimedia Commons

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1002517) describes a partly enclosed stone hut circle settlement on Saddlesborough, overlooking the Plym valley. It survives as 27 hut circles, about seven enclosures of various sizes and other boundary walls. Up to 14 of the huts are attached to boundary walls, and many of these form parts of the outer boundaries of enclosures. The rest are freestanding. The huts are from 3.4 to 8.2 metres across inside, and the largest has a double wall. It lies in the parish of Shaugh Prior, about 2.2 km south-west of Little Trowlesworthy Tor and 1.7 km north of Wotter.

Partial excavations in 1960 to 1963 gave a radiocarbon date of 1250 BC for one hut, together with charcoal, flint flakes, a scraper and interior post holes. Some enclosures seem to have no entrances, and excavations nearby suggest they may have been built that way on purpose, possibly to keep livestock out. In one enclosure a granite trough has been worked into a square block in the south wall.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1002517 (updated 3 November 2015), which cites Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities (1994), and PastScape 439232, 439358, 439361, 439364, 439367, 439370, 439483 and 1106079.

  • Period: Bronze Age
  • Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1002517)
  • Grid reference: SX 5574 6351 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)
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“All around the hills were silent; and the long pale shadows lay, like flaws of calm on tidal waters; while the "holy circles," where unholy deeds had stained the moor, stood up, like ghosts that have no churchyard.”

Who wrote this?

R. D. Blackmore. From Christowell (1882).

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