Venford coaxial fields, south-east

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1020092) describes coaxial fields, hut circles, a cairn, historic fields and tinwork earthworks on Holne Moor, above the valley of the River Dart. The fields are part of the Dartmeet coaxial field system, rubble banks that were in places altered when later historic fields were made. There are at least nine parallel reaves running north-east to south-west, many ending at the terminal reave on the west edge of the field system, with other boundaries making smaller fields and enclosures. It lies in the parish of Holne, about 1.7 km south of Hockinston Tor and 1.6 km north-west of Michelcombe.

At least nine hut circles stand in the field system, with rubble or upright-stone walls up to 0.8 metres high round spaces 3.5 to 8 metres across. Two have visible doorways and one a hook-shaped porch. A cairn at SX 68847032 is a flat-topped mound 9.7 metres across and up to 0.8 metres high with a small central hollow from partial excavation or robbing. Historic fields with ditched boundary banks cover much of the monument and in places reuse earlier prehistoric walls.

There are abundant remains of tin prospecting and extraction. Clusters of small rectangular pits and narrow trenches were dug in the search for tin, and the lodes found were worked by openworks, narrow steep-sided gullies cut into the hillside. Three disused leats run through. The northern is the Holne Moor Leat or Hamlyn's Leat, cut early in the 19th century to supply textile mills in Buckfastleigh. The southern is the Wheal Emma Leat, built in 1859 to bring water from the upper Swincombe River to top up the River Mardle for the Wheal Emma copper mine near Buckfastleigh, a channel 2.5 metres wide and 0.7 metres deep here, crossed once by a clapper bridge. The third is a short channel beside the Holne Gutter Leat, an earlier route of that leat, which is still in use. The active leats and the metal fence round the Venford Reservoir forestry plantation are excluded, though the ground beneath them is included.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1020092, which cites Butler, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, vol 4, The North (1993), page 176, the 1997 Holne Moor survey plan at 1:2500 and fieldwork for the Monuments Protection Programme by S. Gerrard (2000).

• Period: Bronze Age
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1020092)
• Grid reference: SX 6890 7028 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)