Discovering the Past
Set close to the road at Merrivale are double rows of stones, jagged granite teeth stretching away like stitching on the fabric of the moor. If you stand beside them just before dawn in May, you'll see that the stones point towards the star cluster of the Pleiades rising from the eastern horizon. Four thousand years ago, prehistoric man may have stood here too, using these stones as a primitive calendar for planting and harvesting his crops.
Prehistoric Dartmoor
You'll find such prehistoric remains throughout the moor - the cromlech tomb of Spinster's Rock, the stone circles of Grey Wethers and Scorhill, the 4m high Drizzlecombe menhir, enigmatic monuments erected by Bronze Age people around 2,000BC. As you walk the moor, you'll pass hut circles where early farmers lived, the banked reaves which marked their fields - even the box-like tombs where they buried their dead. This ancient society farmed here for a thousand years, until the worsening weather drove them from the high moor.
Medieval Dartmoor
In 600BC Iron Age folk built their fortified villages on the fringes of the moor; you can scale the ramparts of their hillforts at Cranbrook and Prestonbury, to the southeast of Drewsteignton, and at Hembury Castle north of Buckfastleigh.
Visit Lydford and you'll be treading streets that follow a pattern laid down when the Saxon settlement was established around 900AD. Explore the slopes of Hound Tor, and you can trace village longhouses and corn-drying barns dating back to the 13th century. At some farms you can still see such longhouses - single-story granite buildings where families once lived cheek-by-jowl with farm animals.
Medieval settlements were linked by lich ways and the paths of monks travelling from the abbeys of Buckfast, Tavistock and Buckland. For centuries these trails, marked with crosses and passing over clapper bridges, were busy with traders and pack-horses, laden with farm produce and tin ingots bound for the stannary towns of Ashburton, Chagford and Tavistock.
Have a more detailed look at Dartmoor's rich archaeological history in the Prehistoric Archaeology factsheet, or read a Guide to the Archaeology of the Open Moor, a leaflet detailing the Archaeology which can be found on the open moor.
Mines and Quarries
Moorland tin-streaming dates back to the 12th century and earlier, and the ruins of tin, copper, lead, zinc and silver mines abound. You'll discover mineral spoil heaps in river valleys and derelict blowing houses, wheel pits and tinners' huts at sites such as Wheal Betsy, Vitifer, Birch Tor and Golden Dagger. You'll also find the mounds of medieval warrens, where rabbits were bred to feed the miners. Look for evidence of other industries too - tramways for china clay pits and granite quarries, the buildings of a gunpowder factory at Powdermills, and the leats which supplied moorland water to Devonport and Plymouth.
Read an exploration of the history of Dartmoor's long involvement in Tin Mining in the Dartmoor's Tin Industry Factsheet.
