Merrivale stone rows and cairns, Longash Common

Historic England's scheduling record (list entry 1013429) describes three stone alignments, ten cairns, three hut circles and a length of the Great Western Reave on a gentle south-west-facing slope on Longash Common, above the valley of the River Walkham. It forms the central part of a wider cluster of nationally important monuments that have their own schedulings, and part of it is in the care of the Secretary of State. The Longash leat is excluded. It lies in the parish of Dartmoor Forest, about 0.9 km north of Little King's Tor and 3 km north-east of Sampford Spiney.

The northern alignment runs about east to west and is a double row 182 metres long of upright stones 0.2 to 0.4 metres high, with a much larger blocking stone, up to 1.2 metres high, at the east end. The stones are on average 1.7 metres apart along the rows, and the rows 1.1 metres apart. A second double row lies 24 metres south and roughly parallel, 264 metres long, with stones 0.2 to 0.7 metres high and a blocking stone up to 1.35 metres at its east end. A cairn midway along it is a circular mound 2.7 metres across and up to 0.3 metres high ringed by seven upright stones 3.6 metres across inside, with a hollow in the middle that may be an early dig and two slabs in the bottom that may be a cist. Worth says this is the only example on Dartmoor of a cairn set along the length of a row, and that its position midway supports the idea that the row is more or less complete. The third alignment lies south of the second and runs north-north-east to south-south-west, a single row 42 metres long of stones 0.1 to 0.5 metres high, 0.9 metres apart on average, with a blocking stone at each end and a small cairn at the north-east end, 3.5 metres across, which Baring-Gould says held a cist.

Three more cairns lie close to the rows. A ring cairn 11 metres south of the southern double row is a bank 1.4 metres wide and 0.3 metres high round a space 15 metres across. The hollow in its middle, 5 metres long and 0.5 metres deep, is where Baring-Gould dug in 1851 and found a cist or inner circle of upright stones and an outer kerb, and a mound beside the hollow is probably his spoil. A second cairn 13 metres south-south-west is 4.3 metres across and 0.5 metres high with a hollow. The third, 8 metres south of the southern row, is 10 metres across and 0.3 metres high and holds a large stone cist, 2.2 metres long, 0.9 metres wide and 0.8 metres deep, partly covered by a granite cover stone split in two. The Dartmoor Exploration Committee investigated it in 1895 and found a flint scraper, a flint flake and a polishing stone. Worth believed the cist had been restored too generously and was originally smaller.

South-east of the rows a 380 metre length of the Great Western Reave runs downslope, a rubble bank 2 metres wide and up to 0.5 metres high, with an 80 metre break near two of the huts where it probably survives buried, and its southern end destroyed by a tin streamwork. The reave is over 10 kilometres long and the longest known prehistoric land boundary on Dartmoor. Five cairns, 2.5 to 5 metres across and 0.6 to 0.75 metres high, sit on or beside it. They are younger than the reave and are thought to be funerary, and one has a kerb of two concentric rings. Three huts lie nearby: the northern, 7.5 metres across with a wall 1.8 metres wide, the western, 6 metres across, with 4 metres of wall robbed on the south-south-west, and the southern, 6.3 metres across, attached to the west side of the reave.

Sources: Historic England list entry 1013429, which cites Worth's Dartmoor (1981 edition), pages 174 and 215 to 216, Rowe, A Perambulation of the Ancient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor, page 208, Fleming, The Dartmoor Reaves (1988), pages 42 to 44, Emmett, 'Stone Rows: The Traditional View Reconsidered' (Devon Archaeological Society Proceedings 37, 1979), page 111, Grinsell, Dartmoor Barrows (Devon Archaeological Society Proceedings 36, 1978), page 173, Baring-Gould in the Devonshire Association Transactions, Gibson, Single Monument Class Description: Stone Hut Circles (1987), the National Archaeological Record (SX57SE110, SX57SE109, SX57SE111 and SX57SE12) and the Devon County Sites and Monuments Register (SX57SE83, SX57SE135.1 and SX57SE146). Sandy Gerrard has posted pointers to the entry for the southern single row in his stone rows gazetteer (stonerows.wordpress.com) on the Historic England page, and 43 visitor comments there; I have not linked or used them.

• Period: Bronze Age
• Status: Scheduled monument (Historic England list entry 1013429)
• Grid reference: SX 5550 7474 (approximate, from the listing's coordinates)