Merrivale

Merrivale is a hamlet beside the River Walkham on the B3357, west of Dartmoor Prison. It grew around the Merrivale granite quarry, once Tor Quarry, which began work in 1875 or 1876 (sources differ) and closed in 1997. Granite from here went into the paving of Trafalgar Square and the 1950s New Scotland Yard. What remains is the quarry workers' housing and the Dartmoor Inn.

English Heritage dates the ritual monuments here to 3000 to 2300 BC and the settlement to 2300 to 800 BC. Two double stone rows run roughly east to west, 182 and 263 metres long, each with more than 150 stones, mostly under a metre high. West of them is a circle of 11 stones about 18 metres across, and a standing stone more than 3 metres high. A stone-lined burial chamber lies south of the rows, with a damaged capstone, and nobody knows when it cracked.

North of the rows are the remains of over 50 roundhouses, some about 8 metres across. The settlement was probably abandoned around 800 to 700 BC as the farmed soil wore out. The Great Western Reave, the longest of Dartmoor's reaves, runs to the west. Early fieldwork here dates from 1827 and 1828, and the Devonshire Association investigated the site from 1893 to 1906.