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Main image: Photo: Derek Harper, Wikimedia Commons
This scheduled monument is the earthwork remains of a settlement that once stood on the open moorland west of Holwell Tor. The site dates to the Bronze Age, when Dartmoor supported a considerable population living in small communities scattered across the high ground. What survives today are the low stone foundations and enclosure walls that once formed the domestic spaces of these early moorland inhabitants.
The settlement sits within the wider pattern of Bronze Age activity visible across central Dartmoor. Walking this area, the remains blend into the moorland landscape of grass, heather and granite outcrops. The site offers insight into how people adapted to life on the moor thousands of years ago, and why Dartmoor's archaeological record remains so rich and legible to those who know how to read it.
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