A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
Next came the newtake-wall builders. The ravage they have wrought
is incalculable. In 1848 S. Rowe published his _Perambulation of
Dartmoor_, and gave an illustration of double stone rows that ran
from the Longstone, near Caistor Rock, for half a mile to the Teign.
In 1851 I planned them. A few years ago a farmer built a newtake wall,
and used the rows as his quarry; nothing now is left of them but a few
insignificant stones he did not consider worth his while to remove. The
stones are in the wall, and can be recognised, and the socket-holes can
all be traced, with a spade.
There was a row or set of rows of stones on a common near Leusden. In
1898 the road-menders destroyed it and employed the stones for the
repair of the Ashburton highway.
Now it is quite possible that the old rude stone monument builders
did not erect really mighty structures on Dartmoor, but it is still
more likely that all such as were of any size have been carried
away. Lake-head Hill, near Post Bridge, must at one time have been a
veritable necropolis. The farmer at Bellever was given his holding on a
rent that was to be mainly paid by inclosing new-takes, and repairing
old walls. For six years he was employed in clearing Lake-head Hill of
all the stones he could find. Thousands of loads were removed, and it
is only by a lucky chance that one or two kistvaens have escaped. Three
pounds with their huts, probably scores of kistvaens, and certainly
several stone rows, have been obliterated by this man. In 1851 I drew
the finest moor kistvaen at Merrivale Bridge. The covering stone
measured 9 feet 3 inches by 4 feet 9 inches. In 1891 a man at Merrivale
Bridge wanting a gatepost, cut one out of the capstone and left only
two scraps _in situ_.
Considering the ruthless manner in which these monuments of a hoar
antiquity have been carried away or destroyed, it is a marvel that any
remain; but then, this devastation explains why those allowed to remain
are such only as were considered too insignificant to offer inducement
to the plunderer. The late Mr. Bennett, of Archerton, when inclosing
and planting, utilised a fine pound for a clump of beech. The old
inclosing ring was used up to make a wall for the protection of the
young trees, and these latter, in growing, threw all the huts that had
not been despoiled out of shape and into inextricable confusion.
Let us now take in their order such monuments as remain, and I will say
a few words about each kind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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