Archaeological feature for January

Pillow mounds

Pillow mounds are artificially built mounds of earth and stone which provided shelter for rabbits which were once reared commercially on Dartmoor’s warren farms. Rabbits were farmed for both their meat and their fur from the later medieval period

Dartmoor’s wet and stony soil was not very inviting to burrowing animals so artificial burrows were built to encourage them to remain with their warren Also known as  buries, they provided soft dry ground for rabbits to burrow into and live in, whilst also providing a way of managing and harvesting the rabbit crop.

Pillow mounds are generally long straight sided mounds with rounded ends and raised profiles, usually aligned across the contour of a hillside, with a drainage ditch surrounding them to prevent them from becoming damp or flooded.

They were constructed by digging a trench with several branches leading out from it to form small chambers; these were bridged over with stones and covered with earth, leaving the necessary entrance holes for rabbits to enter in and depart.from.They range in size from 8m to 45m,  sometimes they were built as several mounds,  or  an existing bank/wall was adapted into a series of buries.

They can often be identified by their distinctive cover of vegetation which contrasts with the surrounding area.

Rabbits were caught in large numbers on the warrens between September to March.  During the evenings, whilst the rabbits were feeding on higher ground, nets were staked out across the area between their feeding area and the pillow mounds. The rabbits were driven into the nets by the warrener’s dogs where they would be caught.  An alternative method was to net over the openings in the pillow mounds and send ferrets into the mounds; the rabbits would try to escape from the mound and would become tangled up in the nets.

Warrens were generally positioned away from other farms and included a house where the warrener and his family lived. There were at least 20 rabbit warrens on Dartmoor, which you can read about in the Historic Environment Record (PDF Help 170kb)

Some have their origins in the seventeenth century, including that at Ditsworthy. Ditsworthy Warren in the Plym valley was the largest warren on Dartmoor and was the last warren to cease working in the 1940s. At one time there were five rabbit warrens in the Plym valley, and over 200 pillow mounds have been recorded here. At Huntingdon Warren in the Avon valley there were 112 pillow mounds within the one warren. Pillow mounds are occasionally found away from the warren farm areas; these were used by local farmers for keeping rabbits for their own consumption.