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Beardown Hill rabbit warren

Grid ref: SX 6000 7547

Main image: Photo: Derek Harper, Wikimedia Commons

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1021176) describes a rabbit warren on a south-facing slope of Beardown Hill, above the valley of the Cowsic River. The scheduling falls into two areas. It has at least 50 pillow mounds, all but one south of a now abandoned length of the Devonport Leat. The mounds are 2.3 to 54 metres long, averaging 9.38, and 0.5 to 1 metre high, and most have a ditch round them from which the material was dug. The earliest mention of the warren is in a Duchy of Cornwall lease of 1808, and it is generally thought to have been set up around then. The nearby Dartmoor Prison may have been the main market for its produce. Modern fence posts in the monument are excluded, though the ground under them is included, and so is the Devonport Leat, which passes beneath it in an underground pipe. It lies in the parish of Dartmoor Forest, about 1.6 km west of Crockern Tor and 0.9 km north-west of Two Bridges.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1021176, which cites Probert's Beardown Farm Survey (SX67NW71, 1988).

  • Period: Medieval
  • Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1021176)
  • Grid reference: SX 6000 7547 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)
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Rainbow - watern tor in the distanceRainbow - watern tor in the distance. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography

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