Given to me by a resident at Shipley Bridge May 2024 (Incidently, while assisting me parking to avoid the farcical car parking tariffs which, it appears, are VERY unpopular with locals). Stick the number in your phone – you never know...
Given to me by a resident at Shipley Bridge May 2024 (Incidently, while assisting me parking to avoid the farcical car parking tariffs which, it appears, are VERY unpopular with locals). Stick the number in your phone – you never know...
Dartmoor National Park Authority is to spend £90,000 excavating what experts believe is a Bronze Age burial chamber.
More info :
THE first stone circle for more than a century has been discovered on Dartmoor.
The set – at least 4,000 years old – is the highest circle in southern England and the second-largest on Dartmoor.
Read more:
A fur pelt found in an ancient burial chamber suggests that bears once roamed Dartmoor, it has been claimed.
megalithomania.co.uk/tours.html
Dartmoor Stone Circles and Avenues with author Peter Knight: Wednesday 16th May 2012, 8am – 6pm.
A five-hour walk around the incredible landscape of megalithic Dartmoor, Devon, visiting stone circles, megalithic avenues, menhirs and tracking earth energies. First, the Fernworthy Stone Circle, hidden in woods on the edge of the moor. Then we will walk up onto the moor to see the Longstone and adjacent stone rows. Some of these are astronomically aligned. Then into Chagford for lunch: there are tea rooms and pubs. (Note: Not included in price). After lunch, we shall visit the Scorhill Stone Circle, which nestles in fantastic scenery, and has astronomical alignments, before going down to the river nearby to visit the Tolmen Stone, a massive boulder with a hole right through it, which we shall descend into as a rite of passage.
(If you are going on the Cornwall Tour 16th – 20th May, you must be on this tour). Details of Cornwall Tour here: megalithomania.co.uk/cornwall2012.html
Coach travel included in price of all tours. Meet at Glastonbury Abbey Car Park, or meet us there. Bring packed lunch. Info & Booking: 07779 113452
From Western Morning News Feb 26th 2011
Nomination for project to save cairns on moor
A project to improve the condition of prehistoric cairns on Dartmoor has been nominated for a national award.
The Dartmoor Cairn Repair Project has been shortlisted for the Marsh Archaeology Award, organised by the Council for British Archaeology.
The award is given to a voluntary project which has worked to improve the condition of the nation’s heritage.
There are more than 1,200 known round cairns on Dartmoor. The majority are thought to date to around 3,500-4,000 years ago, although some may be even older.
The project between Dartmoor National Park Authority (NPA), English Heritage and the Dartmoor Preservation Association saw volunteers carry out surveys and repairs under specialist supervision.
It has resulted in 31 of the scheduled monuments being removed from the English Heritage “at risk” register.
NPA archaeologist Andy Crabb said: “This is great recognition for a fantastic project which has surveyed and repaired over 45 prehistoric cairns in the last five years.
“The cairns repaired by the project had become damaged through disturbance such as the remodelling of the stone material to create shelters. This can expose fragile archaeology once contained within the cairn and destroy its distinctive profile.”
James Paxman, chief executive of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, added: “This is tremendous news and proves what an enormous amount can be achieved by volunteers working together with other organisations.
“The team has become a highly skilled and close knit unit. Besides the actual restoration work the quality of their field survey drawings is outstanding and provides an important new source of information about Dartmoor’s cairns.” The winner will be announced in March.
Several events on and in the Dartmoor area as part of the Festival of British Archaeology – 17th July to 1st August 2010
Going for Bronze – Dartmoor’s Bronze Age
Sat 17 July-Sun 1 Aug
High Moorland Visitor Centre, Princetown,
Yelverton, Plymouth
Visit this exhibition which defines the many changes which happened during Dartmoor’s Bronze Age.
Dartmoor National Park Authority & Royal Albert Memorial Museum – 01822890414
[email protected]
Brimpts Tin Mines, Dartmeet – a Short Guided Walk
Thu 29 July 14.00 – 16.00
Brimpts Farm, Dartmeet, Dartmoor
Guided walk around part of Brimpts Tin Mines Trail, led by volunteers who have worked on conserving this fascinating site.
All welcome, stout footwear needed.
Dartmoor Tinworking Research Group – 01752 696257
[email protected]
www.dtrg.org.uk
Bronze Age on Dartmoor
Wed 11 Aug 10.30-12.30 & afternoon guided walk
Jubilee Hall, Cross Tree, Chagford, Newton Abbot
Activities to bring alive the life and culture of Bronze Age people on Dartmoor and an exploration of a local Bronze Age settlement and ritual site with an experienced guide.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum – 01392 665780
[email protected]
www.exeter.gov.uk/RAMM
Bronze Age Life and Landscapes
Wed 28 July 10.30-12.30 & 13.30-15.30
Exeter Cathedral Chapter House
Explore Bronze Age culture with special reference to sites on Dartmoor.
A partnership between RAMM and Dartmoor National Park.
Royal Albert Memorial Museum – 01392 665780
[email protected]
www.exeter.gov.uk/RAMM
Wayside Marker Stones on Dartmoor
Tue 27 July 10.00 – 14.00
Meet at car park on Whitchurch Down
A guided walk along old tracks and highways on the western flank of Dartmoor, passing ancient stone crosses and turnpike
milestones that informed earlier travellers.
Dartmoor National Park & Milestone Society – 013922 77271
[email protected]
Archaeological Guided Walk around Cox Tor, near Princetown
Sat 17 July 14.00 – 16.00
Meet at Pork Hill car park
Guided walk of Cox Tor, looking at archaeology, and visiting the DPA cairn survey and repair team at work. All welcome, stout
footwear needed.
Dartmoor Preservation Association – 01752 696257
[email protected]
www.dartmoorpreservation.com
LITTERED across the hills of Dartmoor in Devon, southern England, around 80 rows and circles of stones stand sentinel in the wild landscape. Now, striking similarities between one of these monuments and Stonehenge, 180 kilometres to the east, suggest they may be the work of the same people.
The row of nine stones on Cut Hill was discovered in 2004 on one of the highest, most remote hills of Dartmoor national park. “It is on easily the most spectacular hill on north Dartmoor,” says Andrew Fleming, president of the Devon Archaeological Society. “If you were looking for a distant shrine in the centre of the north moor, that’s where you would put it.”
Ralph Fyfe of the University of Plymouth and independent archaeologist Tom Greeves have now carbon-dated the peat surrounding the stones. This suggests that at least one of the stones had fallen – or been placed flat on the ground – by between 3600 and 3440 BC, and another by 3350 to 3100 BC (Antiquity, vol 84, p 55).
That comes as a surprise to archaeologists, who, on the strength of artefacts found nearby, had assumed that Dartmoor monuments like Cut Hill and Stall Moor (pictured) dated from the Bronze Age, around 2100 to 1600 BC. Instead, Fyfe suggests that Cut Hill is from the Neolithic period, the same period that Stonehenge was built.
Unlike Stonehenge, the 2-metre-tall Cut Hill stones lie flat on the ground, parallel to each other and between 19 metres and 34.5 metres apart, like the sleepers of a giant railway track. Packing stones discovered at the end of one of the megaliths suggest at least one of them stood erect at some point, but the regularity of their current layout makes it likely they were deliberately placed that way, Greeves says.
What’s more, the stones’ alignment with the summer and winter solstices seems identical to that of Stonehenge, Newgrange in Ireland and Maes Howe in Scotland. “It could be coincidence, but it’s striking,” says archaeologist Mike Pitts.
article in Newscientist by Linda Geddes
tinyurl.com/y788obk
p.s. A longer article in British Archaeology May/June says “that there are similar stone rows in form and scale on Bodmin Moor... a similar orientation appears at another exceptional site at Drizzlecombe, where two or three long rows runs for 75-150 m; one ends with one of Dartmoor’s largest standing stone 4.3m.“....
When the water levels at a Devon reservoir were lowered it revealed an unexpected prehistoric surprise. A previously unrecorded complex was discovered in the mud at the bottom of Tottiford Reservoir near Hennock on Dartmoor. The complex, which is believed to be 4,000 years old, is made up of stone rows, burial cairns and a stone circle. The discovery is being described as one of the most important on Dartmoor in recent times.
news.bbc.co.uk/local/devon/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8353000/8353334.stm
Peace
Pilgrim
X
An ancient British inland Atlantis dating back millennia has been discovered on a remote moor.
The remains – including a mini-Stonehenge – were found when an old reservoir was drained in Dartmoor, Devon.
The find includes remains of ancient walled buildings, burial mounds and a stone circle 27m (89ft) across.
‘Most of the stones we found would have been put in place around 4,000 years ago but some of the flint is much earlier, going right back to the Mesolithic period around 7,000 to 8,000 years ago,’ said Dartmoor National park authority archaeologist Jane Marchand.
From The Metro, no other information or news elsewhere but be wary of news items carrying ‘Atlantis’ and ‘Stonehenge’ in their words!....
The Guardian has gone absolutely mad on archaeology articles this morning........
A dig in Devon reveals how life was lived 3,500 years ago: from cookery to DIY
The nearest proper road is a couple of miles away. The toilet is an energetic yomp down a steep slope and through the conifers. When it rains – and here on Dartmoor it really does pelt down – the only shelter is project supervisor Simon Hughes’s old VW Golf. “It’s started to smell like a dead dog,” he says with a big grin.
Despite the tough conditions, Hughes and his team are relishing working on the Bellever roundhouse. “It’s a great project for us,” he says. “It’s a chance to really try to find out what was going on here 3,500 years ago.”
There are lots of roundhouses on Dartmoor (5,000 stone ones and more wooden ones that have rotted away without leaving any trace), but most were studied a century or more ago. They used to dig one a day then, rather than taking weeks over it as they do now.
So when two years ago a great storm felled a plantation of conifers at Bellever, disturbing the roundhouse’s granite structure, archaeologists argued that they ought to have another look. It is an exciting project: only the second roundhouse to be excavated in the area in the last 20 years and a chance to learn more about the people who, at a time when the climate was much more clement than it is now, were able to live and work here.
By the time the bronze-age people arrived on Dartmoor, the slopes had been cleared of trees so that crops could be grown and animals – cattle and sheep – grazed. Blocks of land may have been controlled by groupings of people or tribes. Some of the roundhouses have porches, protection against the weather, others seem to have been divided into rooms. Roofs built from timber may have been covered in turf, heather, gorse or thatch.
In October last year, the Dartmoor National Park Authority commissioned a small excavation here by a professional firm of consultants, AC Archaeology. Just under a quarter of the house, which has a diameter of 8m, was dug but many interesting and well-preserved features, including a mysterious nearby cairn and well-preserved paved flooring made up of granite slabs, were found.
More than 30 fragments of bronze-age pottery were recovered. Another intriguing find was a piece of worked timber, which may have formed part of the original structure.
“It blew us away,” says Andy Crabb, an archaeologist who works for the national park and for English Heritage. “Dartmoor is very wet, very acidic, so bone, ceramics, organic material gets eaten away, but here we found a whole sequence of occupation and abandonment.” In other words, evidence that people had lived there, moved on, been replaced by others. Clearly the site warranted further exploration.
Financing such a project is key. It was decided that volunteers would be used to clear the vegetation, topsoil and peat. AC Archaeology won the contract for the next stage, funded by the national park and other bodies at a cost of £7,500.
July’s nasty weather has made it a tough dig. Which is why Hughes’s car is so smelly. It’s his call when rain stops play and he admits that they tend to keep going until the point where the roundhouse is flooded and the site could get damaged. He jokes that the state of his and his co-workers’ joints is secondary.
The team, usually three or four strong, remains cheerful. “We’re like a little archaeological family,” says Kerry Dean, 24. “The banter is good and we bring cakes up sometimes to share and keep us going.”
Hughes produces a chunky piece of pottery from an old ice-cream tub. At first it looks like the kind of thing you might come across in the garden while you’re harvesting the potatoes. But, like just about everything here, it gives an intriguing glimpse into bronze-age life.
Its thickness shows it must have been part of a large bowl, and was almost certainly used for cooking. Analysis of the fragment has revealed that it is made of gabbroic clay from the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall – 100 miles away.
“We took it and showed it to a local potter,” says Crabb. “She was amazed at the quality of it. Remember they wouldn’t have had wheels. They were throwing these very large and heavy pots by hand.”
These sort of details have brought the site to life for local people. Around 600 traipsed up the rough track to the spot for an open day and, almost every day, hikers stop to look and wonder at what life was like here 3,500 years ago.
This summer’s dig has raised many more questions about how this roundhouse was used. The pottery (there are up to 69 pieces now) has been found only in one half of the structure – the half that would have enjoyed more of the sunlight. One theory is that the people spent the day in this half and slept in the other. Frustratingly, they have found no evidence of a cooking area. It may be that a smaller roundhouse nearby was the kitchen.
As they have probed further down, gone back further in time, they have found that the roundhouse was used over a period of roughly 200 years. The post holes suggest that the living space was re-ordered – ancient DIY.
The cairn remains a mystery. It seems to have been built on top of “tumble” from the wall, indicating that it was built after the roundhouse was abandoned. In Ireland, evidence of cremation or burial has been found under such structures, but not here. Clearly it was important – but the reason remains unknown.
Soon Hughes and his team will pack up their tools and head off to another site in his smelly car. The conifers will start growing again. “They’re like triffids,” says Crabb. The information they have collected will be stored away and the Bellever roundhouse and its mysteries will be left alone again.
guardian.co.uk/science/2009/aug/28/archaeology-bellever-dartmoor-bronze-age
Excellent website featuring lots of lovely lists to help get one far from the madding crowds upon Dartmoor.
Web site for the Dartmoor preservation association who own three areas of land within the Dartmoor National Park, which together include examples of most of Dartmoor’s important features, landscapes and habitats.
A cornucopia of photographs dating back 150 years, lots of photos of Ancient sites on Dartmoor taken before modern day destruction/erosion.
Archive photos of Dartmoor.
