<< Our Photo Pages >> Tunhill Rocks - Ancient Village or Settlement in England in Devon
Submitted by AngieLake on Monday, 27 August 2012 Page Views: 3377
Multi-periodSite Name: Tunhill Rocks Alternative Name: Tunhill Rocks Homestead, Tunhill Rocks FarmsteadCountry: England County: Devon Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Ashburton Nearest Village: Widecombe in the Moor
Map Ref: SX7318975796
Latitude: 50.568110N Longitude: 3.791998W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Ancient Village or Settlement in Devon
This site is well worth a visit if you are in the area of Foale’s Arrishes, Top Tor and Pil Tor. It is situated just to the SW of Pil Tor down an easy track overlooking some lovely scenery, especially towards Widecombe in the valley to NE, and the ridge of tors including Chinkwell Tor to the north.
The small enclosure which Butler describes as a ‘farmstead’, and which is marked ‘Homestead’ on the OS map ‘Outdoor Leisure 28 Dartmoor’, has the remains of just one hut, and another (which I didn’t see) which is much smaller and rectangular rather than round.
Butler was writing over 20 years ago, as my ‘Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquites , Volume One – The East’ was published in 1991, so the remains of those huts may have altered over the years. However, I believed that the upright slabs belonged to the larger hut, which he says was 7.0 m, and the enclosure was easily seen, including more slabs filling in spaces between the natural boundary of rocks.
Butler tells us that:
“West of Tunhill Rocks the ground falls steeply down to the East Webburn river and the village of Widecombe. The small farmstead here lies on the flat ground on the opposite side, tucked into the eastern edge of the rocks. A slabbed bank added on to the end of a reave forms a small enclosure (20x26 m) surrounding two huts. Some of the tor rocks form part of the boundary, the spaces between them filled by sections of bank. The huts were excavated in 1896 by the Dartmoor Exploration Committee and a report was presented in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association the following year. The large hut (7.0 m) still has a well-preserved double-slabbed wall though the entrance which was on the south, downhill side is no longer obvious. The interior is very uneven due to the excavation the major find of which was a large part of a thick-walled cooking vessel which had been much used before being broken. The pottery was of a type found in other hut excavations and the other finds were also typical: a cooking stone, flint, charcoal and a piece of slate.
The second building is much smaller (approx. 3x2 m) and lies close to the tor rocks. The foundations are rectangular rather than round which is unusual for a prehistoric building on Dartmoor but not unique. The excavators considered it to be contemporary with the larger hut because of the similarity of some of the pottery found on the original floor level and suggested it may have been a kitchen or even a small dwelling, though 6 square metres seems rather cramped for this purpose. A few shards of a much better made article, probably a small cup, were also found, together with several good flint implements and charcoal."
I took a photograph across the hut circle towards the rocks, and from that angle there were two 'head-shaped' rocks protruding from the main mass. It struck me that the occupants of the hut might have seen this as symbolic of some kind of twin 'god-image'. The centre of the rock pile seemed to form a kind of shelter, too, but I didn't climb down there. A great place to grow up in for adventurous boys and girls!
Update December 2019: This site is featured on the Prehistoric Dartmoor Walks (PDW) website - see their entry for the Tunhill Rocks Settlement. The settlement is also recorded as Pastscape Monument No. 445121, as MDV7438 (Hut Circle Settlement on the east side of Tunhill Rocks) on the Devon and Dartmoor HER, and scheduled as Historic England List Entry No. 1003286 (Hut circle at Tunhill Rocks).
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