A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
Within the area of the camp are a few hut circles. One near the centre
is double, and contained an incredible number of flint chips, a flint
scraper, and a core from which flakes had been struck. The whole area
is littered with flint chips that are brought up by the moles when
making their burrows, and curiously enough not a single arrow-head
or flake that can be confidently set down as a weapon has been
disinterred. The pottery found is all of the hand-made cooking-vessel
type.
To the east is a circle sheltered on one side by a mass of rock, that
has a second chamber, a sort of bedroom made under a slab of rock, with
the interstices on all sides built up, except only on that by which
it was entered from the hut. A good deal of flint was found there.
Outside, on the south, was another hut circle, where a piece of clear
quartz crystal was found, together with a flint knife that had one edge
serrated by use.
[Illustration: COVERED CHAMBER AND COOKING-HOLE.]
Connected with the camp on the north-east is a ruined wall that leads
to an inclosure with numerous hut circles. South-west of the camp
further down the hill is a pound in good preservation with eight hut
circles in it. A reeve or bank to the west of the camp leads down to
other collections of habitations of the same description.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF STONE AND TIMBER WALL.]
Some ten cairns on the slopes have been investigated, but have yielded
little beyond the handful of ashes sunk in a pit in the centre that
represents the dead. A ruined kistvaen, much mutilated, lies between
the camp and the Langstone, a menhir that gives its name to the common,
and which is the starting-point of a stone row of very inconsiderable
blocks that led to a cairn now demolished, and its place occupied by a
pool. From Langstone a track to the south-east leads by the head of the
Peter Tavy stream, which rises in a bog, to a fine circle of standing
stones, and on the slope below that and above the Walkham river is a
large settlement of some thirty or forty habitations. Beyond the Peter
Tavy brook, moreover, are numerous clusters of dwellings. To all the
population who lived in these huts, Whit Tor had served as a camp of
refuge. The place deserves a visit, for we have there collected within
a small radius the houses and hamlets occupied by the primeval race,
the tombs of their dead, the stone row set up in memory of some chief
represented by the Longstone towering above the petty stones below, the
circle in which the dead were burned, and finally, the camp to which
they flew to defend their beloved moor from invasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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