Trowlesworthy Warren

• Period: medieval or post-medieval (recorded by 1651; in use into the first half of the 20th century)
• Extent: the slopes of Great and Little Trowlesworthy Tors, between the River Plym, Spanish Lake and Blacka Brook
• Features: about 64 pillow mounds and 40 vermin traps (Historic England)

Trowlesworthy Warren is generally accepted as the oldest surviving warren on Dartmoor. Rabbits were farmed here for fur and meat, in pillow mounds built to be burrowed in, and protected from predators by drystone vermin traps. One account has the land granted to Samson de Traylesworthie by Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon, before 1292, and the warren leased to William Woollcombe in 1551. More recent work questions the medieval start. It is certainly recorded by 1651, when John Hamblin, a skinner from Plymouth, occupied it.

The individual scheduled mounds and traps have their own group listings: pillow mounds, vermin traps and the round cairns on the same hillside. Historic England also schedules a partially enclosed hut circle settlement and post-medieval warren structures on the western slope of Little and Great Trowlesworthy Tors (list entry 1019084).

Lee Moor, just beyond, has its own history of china clay working, and the warren and the clay works leat cross in places.

Historic England's single large entry for the warren (list entry 1020323) covers its prehistoric and historic landscape together: a stone hut circle settlement complex, a ring cairn and clearance cairns; a medieval field system bounded by a corn ditch; and post-medieval fields, pillow mounds, vermin traps and animal runs, a rectangular building, a dam, leats, a gravel pit and areas of alluvial tin streamworks. Together they show the three main periods of intensive use on Dartmoor.

The scheduled mounds and traps are grouped by the place they are measured from: around Great Trowlesworthy Tor, around Trowlesworthy Warren House and near Blackaton Cross.