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Antiquities/Stone Rows

Grey Wethers Stone Circles

These two granite stone circles almost touch and were excavated in 1898 and restored in 1909. The northern circle has about 20 stones and the southern circle about 29 and the mean diameter is 32.9m (108ft). They are both of a similar size and all of the stones are roughly the same height at around 1.5m (4.5ft).

Scorhill Stone Circle

This Bronze Age stone circle is 27m (nearly 90ft) in diameter and it has been estimated that only half of its original 70 standing stones remain. There is also a local legend that horse riders can't get their horses to go through the circle.

Hill Forts

Near Drewsteignton are the remains of three Iron Age Hill Forts (c. 700BC-0); Prestonbury and its smaller neighbours Cranbrook and Wooston Castle. Hill Forts were built to protect families and livestock against raids by neighbours.

Merrivale

Located on the road between Princetown and Tavistock this site is one of the largest and most accessible prehistoric sites on Dartmoor. The site comprises three stone rows - two double and one single; a stone circle; a standing stone; a large damaged cist and hut circles to the north. Merrivale was used for ceremonial purposes.

Also near here is an area known as the 'Plague Market' where farmers left food for payment during the Tavistock plague outbreak in 1625.

Drizzlecombe & Ditsworthy (Plym Valley)

The Drizzlecombe complex holds Dartmoor's tallest standing stone, at 4.5m (15ft) and the impressive Giant's Basin cairn. This area has many megalithic remains including a group of small stone circles around cairns, stone rows, standing stones, cists, cairns, hut circles and pounds.

Southeast of Drizzlecombe is Ditsworthy Warren which was once the largest commercial rabbit warren on Dartmoor, at one time taking up nearly 1,100 acres. Rabbit farming was banned in the 1950's, but the remains of Ditsworthy Warren House, built in the sixteenth century, can still be seen.

Nine Maidens

This stone circle consists of eleven stones, though it is thought there were originally forty and there is a ruined cairn in its centre. There is also a legend around this circle, about a group of maidens who danced on a Sunday and were turned into stone. For their punishment, they have to dance at midday, every day for eternity.

Holne Moor

Holne Moor holds remains from a number of ages through Dartmoor including a triple stone row, cairns, hut circles, extensive prehistoric field and territorial boundaries, medieval field systems, old trackways and water channels.

Hound Tor Settlement

Southwest of Hound Tor are the remains of three or four medieval farmsteads. The deserted settlement of Hound Tor was first occupied about 1250 and abandoned 150 years later.