"Keen historians are being invited to help a team of Exeter University archaeologists uncover secrets of an ancient Bronze Age and medieval site.Members of the public are invited to the dig to investigate the remains of a medieval building near an old manor house... continues...
A 4,000 year old grave discovered in Chagford in 1879 is returning to Dartmoor.
The prehistoric grave will be relocated to the High Moorland Centre in Princetown early next month from Torquay Museum where it has been for 120 years... continues...
Ramblers have held a mass trespass on one of Dartmoor's most popular landmarks to protest over its closure. Vixen Tor at Merrivale (Cornwall, England) was shut to the public when a new landowner bought it earlier last year... continues...
Volunteers from Tavistock Conservation Project have been helping to restore the setting of an ancient Scheduled Monument on Dartmoor, almost totally obscured by vegetation... continues...
The farmer who closed Dartmoor's (England) Vixen Tor to the public has been charged with carrying out land improvements without an environmental impact assessment. Mary Alford, who owns the site at Merrivale, near Tavistock, Devon, will appear before Plymouth Magistrates in the New Year... continues...
Dartmoor Preservation Association - Crownhill Down Rally
A quick reminder that there will be a rally at Crownhill Down - which contains significant archaeological remains, and is of ecological importance - on the edge of Dartmoor near Plymouth on Saturday 20th September (starting from 12 noon)... continues...
A Devon farmer has realised his dream by building a Bronze Age burial chamber on his land. He transported four huge pieces of granite from Dartmoor to his estate near Ivybridge to carry out the construction... continues...
The following story came up on the teletext today
26/11/2001
Moves are under way to build a stone maze at Okehampton on the northern fringe of Dartmoor.
Environmental artist Yvette Martin said the maze, which she hopes to build from local stone on farmland at Meldon, would consist of seven circles... continues...
There is a series of books well worth looking at for the serious antiquarian who is going to visit Dartmoor and look for the many sites there.The books are by Jeremy Butler and are called Dartmoor atlas of Antiquities and come in five volumes.Volumes one to four are the main books dealing with, volume 1, The East. Volume 2 ,The North. Volume 3,The South west and volume 4 The South East.Volume 5 is an over all cover of The Second Millennium B.C. and also contains an index.
All the books contain maps and extensive text along with line drawings and the grid references to all the sites mentioned.
My favourite stone circle of all time. I lived around the area for 25 years, visiting it in all seasons. I loved it's remoteness and the fact that you had to make an effort to get there. The fact that a lot of people just walked by without giving it a second glance prompted me to write a poem about it back in 2008
Circles of Stone
My heart is in the lonely places, the forgotten places
that people walk by without seeing
that people walk by without thinking
Where echoes of the past float on the wind
For those that want to hear
For those who want to care
For those who want to be somewhere,
else
The Raven always watching over
Guardian of life and bearer of death
of those who have gone before
Their memories lost, waiting to be found
In the swirling mist and the circles of stone
I am a stranger in this time
Wandering and searching for a truth
that is always out of reach
and I sit
in the circle of life and death set in stone
and live with the pain of having no hope
while listening, for the voices of the past
Heading downhill from Corringdon Ball stone row (30.8.2010), East Glaze Brook proves to be narrower and faster flowing than its western namesake, the water forced into a little fall by the granite rocks on its sides. Luckily it's not wide enough to cause any real obstacle to progress. The long barrow, a skyline landmark for some time, has now disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.
There is apparently another stone row between brook and barrow, but my cursory look doesn't reveal it and by now I am quite tired and hot, and still not quite at the furthest point out of the day, so I don't press the point as much as perhaps I should.
Cresting the ridge, the slumped shape of the long barrow comes back into view. A real rarity on Dartmoor, this wrecked chambered long mound would readily recognise its Cotswold cousins, the principal difference being the much harder granite of its construction. Unfortunately, like many of its family it has been trashed. The chamber is now reduced to a collection of scattered stones, leaning and fallen uprights and a dismounted slab that was presumably the capstone. Cattle clearly trample around the remains, probably making rubbing stones from the uprights. The earth around the stones is being very badly eroded by these visitations. The mound itself is low and stands to a height of less than a metre. An even more trashed and reduced round barrow, cut across by a wall, sits quietly to the southeast. Despite all of this, the long barrow remains surprisingly impressive, partly due to its positioning against the skyline when seen from both east and west. The endless skies of Dartmoor and the solitude of this spot, far away from roads or houses, contribute to a strong sense of timeless place that many barrows in better states of preservation elsewhere lack. As ever on Dartmoor, I find it very difficult to imagine a woodland landscape in place of the wide open spaces of the moor. What change this mound has seen over the ages!
I spend a while here, in silence and solitude, but it's a long, hot walk ahead and at length I return over East Glaze Brook to collect G/F. We head back to the old tramway bed at Glasscombe Ball, which as part of the Two Moors Way will take us all the way back to Ivybridge. It's been a terrific day out, the Neolithic survivors at Cuckoo Ball, Butterdon Hill and Corringdon Ball, although less celebrated and visited than the numerous Bronze Age sites, remain an important and rewarding collection of Dartmoor sites to visit.
(30.8.2010) After leaving Glasscombe Corner stone row, with its ruined terminal cairn, we take a trackless route northeast, roughly following the alignment of the row. The hillside slopes downwards, towards the little valley of West Glaze Brook.
Even in this hot, dry weather the approach to the brook is muddy and damp - in winter this is probably a quagmire. The brook itself runs clear and quick, crossing it is a balancing act across uneven, slippery stones. Luckily it's narrow and we make it across without incident. The hillside then climbs again, to a broad neck of land separating West Glaze Brook from its eastern counterpart. Over to the ESE is the rounded bulk of Corringdon Ball hill, while the slumped lines of the attendant long barrow, our ultimate goal for the day, are now silhouetted against the skyline to the east.
On this neck of land is Corringdon Ball stone row, one of the more well-known of the rows of Dartmoor on account of the multiplicity of its rows. It lies amongst scattered clumps of gorse, vibrantly flowered with yellow at this time of year, and the stones are very small, easily hidden in the short grass. In truth I find myself rather underwhelmed by this site, for reasons I'm not really sure of. Perhaps it's the diminutive size of the stones, or the fact that the overall pattern is quite difficult to ascertain amongst the grass. Maybe it's simply the heat of the Bank Holiday sun overhead. The terminal cairn circle at the eastern end seems strangely resistant to easy plotting by eye, with only an arc of stones cutting across the end of the rows to mark its existence at all.
From this end of the rows, the contours drop steeply again to East Glaze Brook and G/F decides she doesn't want to make the final crossing, electing to stay under the welcome shade of some trees near to the row while I go on to visit Corringdon Ball long barrow.