Longaford Tor hut circle settlement

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1020876) describes a prehistoric settlement, field system and rabbit warren on the west-facing slopes of Longaford and Littaford Tors, above the West Dart River. The scheduling falls into four areas. It lies in the parish of Dartmoor Forest, about 0.4 km north-west of Little Bee Tor and 2.2 km north of Two Bridges.

The settlement has at least 101 hut circles, banks or walls round circular or oval spaces of 3.14 to 52 square metres, averaging 11.9, with walls 0.25 to 1.2 metres high, averaging 0.54. Upright-stone, rubble bank and coursed walling all occur. At least 49 have visible doorways, 28 are linked to rubble walling, one has a porch, one a partition and one a courtyard. The huts are arranged along the contour, run for over 1,400 metres north to south and go with several lengths of rubble walling, enclosures and fields.

Later, much of the settlement was taken into a rabbit warren, which has at least 32 pillow mounds and a warreners' house, with at least 22 of the mounds inside this scheduling. They are rectangular, square, circular or oblong, many flat-topped and ditched on three sides, the ditch being where the material was dug. The two near Littaford Tors are much longer than the rest, 54 metres and 107 metres, while the others are 4 to 13 metres long, 0.6 to 1.2 metres high and mostly steep-sided. The warreners' house, at SX 61167779, is two separate rectangular earthwork buildings inside a rectangular enclosure. A warren is known to have been set up here in 1895 by James Saltroun of Powder Mills and was given up before 1914, though some of the mounds may belong to an earlier warren that is not recorded.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1020876, which cites the Cherrybrook and Longaford survey plan at 1:10,000 (1989) and fieldwork for the Monuments Protection Programme by S. Gerrard (2002).

• Period: Bronze Age
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1020876)
• Grid reference: SX 6137 7719 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)