Longstone Manor House, Burrator

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1415430) describes the standing and buried remains of a post-medieval early-17th-century house at Longstone, with other structures and earthworks above and below the waterline to the south and a wind strew 70 metres to the north-west, on a promontory in Burrator Reservoir. It lies in the parish of Sheepstor, about 0.9 km west of Sheeps Tor and 1.8 km east of Dousland.

The main house is a rectangle 14.5 metres by 6.5 metres, of granite rubble walls with killas infill and granite ashlar on the south wall. Most of the south and west walls survive 3 to 4 metres high. The original entrance, on the south, was a central two-storey granite ashlar porch with a four-centred arched doorway, with one window above and two others in the bays either side. The east wall survives as rubble and low masonry, and the north wall to about a metre, with a blocked mullioned window. The north-west corner has a square room that looks like a later addition, with a blocked window and a doorway with reused jambs. The house was originally two storeys, though little of the first floor survives beyond joist sockets and a fireplace flue, and two more fireplaces with big chamfered stone lintels survive on the north side. Round the house are troughs, a slot bar gate, a gate hanger with a hole in it, architectural fragments, platforms and other worked stones, and midden deposits on its west side. Some of the granite troughs, an apple crusher and a cider press near the house were moved from nearby farms in the 1920s.

A 39 metre stretch of cobbled sunken track, once running from Sheepstor to Longstone, passes the east side of the house at right angles. The west trackway wall survives only a course or two high and includes a blocked archway with medieval stone fragments below the reservoir water line, and the east side is a revetment wall about 2 metres high. South of the house are walls and cobbled surfaces. About 5 metres south, two walls at the edge of the shore survive up to a metre high, and about 21 metres south two outbuildings survive under the reservoir, 4.5 metres by 5.5 metres and 21.5 metres by 9.5 metres, the larger of four rooms. A cobbled path at right angles to the track has at least two phases of building. There are also masonry features from the enlargement of the reservoir in the early 20th century, including the remains of a tramway.

The granite wind strew, a threshing floor, lies 70 metres north-west of the house, 6 metres by 5.5 metres and up to 1.3 metres high, with three steps on the south-east side. Corn was threshed and winnowed on it, and Historic England says it is one of the very few of its kind known to survive in England. It once had an inscription stone, IE AE 1637, thought to refer to John and Anna Elford. The scheduling is in two areas, the southern holding the house, the submerged outbuilding and the earthworks and masonry to the west, and the northern the wind strew.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1415430, which cites Gray, The Garden History of Devon (1995), page 22, Rendell, 'One by one they left the valley: 100 years of Burrator, part 5, the abandoned farms' (Dartmoor Newsletter 18, 1994), pages 15 to 17, and Passmore's 1999 archaeological and historical survey of Longstone Manor and his 1999 recording of the structures below the waterline.

• Period: Medieval
• Status: Listed building (Historic England list entry 1415430)
• Grid reference: SX 5568 6844 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)