Challacombe

Challacombe is a farm and the ruins of a deserted medieval hamlet on the east side of Dartmoor, in the valley below Challacombe Down and close to Grimspound. Historic England lists the monument under Manaton parish. It is named in Domesday and in documents of 1244 and 1303. The 1505 Foresters' accounts record a small hamlet (a vill) called Chalnecombe, and by 1613 there were five tenements, in use until 1880. The tenants were venville tenants, who paid rent in return for grazing and gathering rights on the moor.

At least seven medieval houses can be traced close to the farmhouse. One has the features of a Dartmoor longhouse, with people and animals sharing the same building, and one is said to have become a cider house for the miners. The narrow strip fields (lynchets) run along the west side of the valley and were probably made by medieval farmers in the 12th and 13th centuries. The scheduled area also takes in tinworks, part of a prehistoric hut circle settlement, a cairn and a reave.

The Duchy of Cornwall still owns Challacombe. People combined farming with tin streaming here. Why the hamlet was left is not settled: holidayindartmoor.co.uk offers climate change and the Black Death as possible reasons. The field strips are easiest to make out from Grimspound or Hookney Tor.