Trowlesworthy Warren Farm

Trowlesworthy Warren Farm stands in the Plym valley below Great and Little Trowlesworthy Tors, about 1.5 km up the track from Cadover Bridge. The farm and the warren house are, as far as the sources show, the same place. Historic England's entry for the warren uses both 'Trowlesworthy Farm' and 'Trowlesworthy Warren House' for the farmstead, its monuments are measured from the Warren House, and the National Trust's heritage record and Geograph give one position, SX 567 647, for the 'Warren Farm' and 'Warren House'. We found no source that describes a second building.

The National Trust record calls it an extant farmhouse of the early 19th century, probably built by Peter Nicholls, a tenant from at least 1793, with help from the landowner Captain Woollcombe, and using stone from an earlier house on the site. The same record says it is still occupied as a farmhouse. A 2009 photograph shows farm buildings in a ring of trees with livestock in the fields around them; a chimney and enclosure walls are shown in a second photograph.

It was the warrener's home. Trowlesworthy Warren, which Historic England says is generally accepted as the oldest surviving warren on Dartmoor, was occupied by a Plymouth skinner, John Hamblin, by 1651. The National Trust record has the Woollcombe family acquiring the warren in 1560 and holding it until 1969, when it passed to the Trust; Historic England has a lease to William Woollcombe in 1551, so the dates differ. Warrening ended in the 1950s (the Trust record says after Devon became a rabbit clearance area in 1956) and the last warrener, Robert Giles, died in 1969. Historic England also records a small dam and leat that carried water to the house for domestic use and to drive a water wheel.

Eden Phillpotts opens The Three Brothers (1909) at Great Trowlesworthy, where Milly Luscombe looks down on Trowlesworthy Farm with the great warren spreading round it. The rest of the novel is not set here, and we have not found a source saying which real family the characters drew on.

It is a private farm. Walkers use the track from Cadover Bridge, which the Trust signs as vehicle access to the farm only; the pillow mounds, vermin traps and hut circles around it can be seen from the open land.

Sources: heritagerecords.nationaltrust.org.uk; historicengland.org.uk; gazetteer.org.uk; www.geograph.org.uk; nominatim.openstreetmap.org; beta.dartmoorcam.co.uk