Prehistoric settlements near Challacombe Cross

These remains represent Bronze Age occupation and land use within one of Dartmoor's coaxial field systems, where parallel boundaries divide the moorland into long, regular strips. The settlements, fields and enclosures around Shapley Common are typical of how prehistoric communities organised their farming landscape across the high moor, building stone-walled fields and circular dwellings that still leave their mark on the ground today.

Now largely overgrown, the site is best understood on the ground where earthworks and stone traces reveal the patterns of ancient life. This pocket of the moor shows how intensively Bronze Age people used Dartmoor's open plateau, and why understanding these field systems is vital to reading the moor's deep history.