Sourton Apple Crusher

• Grid reference: SX 54642 89599
• What it is: half of a two-piece granite pound-stone (apple crusher), abandoned unfinished on the open moor
• Size, recorded by Worth in 1953: diameter 7 ft 6 in; 1 ft 5 in thick at the margin and 1 ft 10 in at the centre; the trough is 7 in deep and the margin 7 in wide
• Nearby: the westernmost rocks of Sourton Tors

Half of a granite pound-stone lies on the open moor east of the western rocks of Sourton Tors, a few yards south of the track that forms the Bridestowe parish boundary. It was abandoned: Worth, who listed it among the eight pound-stones he considered representative, wrote that it was given up because of an injury it received in transport, and that the place where the stone was worked can be found not far to the west. A fairly large piece has broken from the margin. He also saw that the rim was meant to be built up in wood, as was usual.

These stones belong to cider making. In Dartmoor farms and monasteries apples were crushed in a circular granite trough, the pound-stone, round which a granite edge runner was turned, first by a horse and later, in places, by water. R. Hansford Worth, who recorded them in 1953, noted that the floor of the trough was grooved across its width and the wheel's tread was fluted, so that the wheel was lifted and dropped as it went and the fruit was pounded as well as ground. The job was not finished until the pips were crushed, which is why the whole process was called pounding. The larger troughs were cut from one block; most were made in two semicircles clamped together across the diameter. Later the work passed to pairs of granite rollers.

Pound-stones of this kind are scattered over Dartmoor. Several are recorded elsewhere on this site, among them the crusher and cider press brought to the Longstone Manor house site in the 1920s, and the unfinished crusher near Gutter Tor Cross.

Sources: R. Hansford Worth, Worth's Dartmoor (1953), chapter 15, pound-stones, item 8, page 386 | S. Baring-Gould, A Book of the West, vol. 1, Devon, chapter VI | position from the grid reference above. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography.