<< Our Photo Pages >> Hook Lake Row - Multiple Stone Rows / Avenue in England in Devon

Submitted by thecaptain on Saturday, 25 September 2004  Page Views: 8054

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Hook Lake Row Alternative Name: Brown Heath Stone Row
Country: England
NOTE: This site is 0.2 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Devon Type: Multiple Stone Rows / Avenue
Nearest Town: Ivybridge  Nearest Village: Harford
Map Ref: SX6411265318  Landranger Map Number: 202
Latitude: 50.471892N  Longitude: 3.916277W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 4 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 2 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 5

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church-grim TheCaptain would like to visit

SandyG visited on 6th Apr 2013 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 1 This has never been an easy row to get to. When visited in 2013 car parking was available at SX 62524 61120. Recently (2016) this car parking area has been closed making it much more difficult to access this part of the moor. The alternative car parking location is at SX 64342 59548. From here the easiest way to reach the row is probably to head east to the Two Moors Way at SX 65765 59965. Then follow the track north to SX 64400 64275 where the path to Hook Lake should be taken. Given the effort to get to the area it would be a good idea to have a look at the Upper Erme Row and some the amazing prehistoric settlements at the same time. A full day but hopefully a rewarding one. Best contemplated in the summer.

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by SandyG : Dense molinia makes it difficult to photograph this row. This is the length approaching the prehistoric enclosure. The structure on the skyline is a prehistoric round house. View from south. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Remains of a double stone row which can be found on the eastern banks of the upper Erme valley in the middle of deepest southern Dartmoor.

The rows have been partially destroyed by the construction of the later Bronze age settlement here, which has two main enclosures, one at each end of the row.

Update August 2019: This row also features on the Prehistoric Dartmoor Walks website - see their entry for the Brown Heath (Hook Lake) Stone Row. The row is also recorded as part of the record for Pastscape Monument No. 441705 and the scheduling information for Historic England List ID 1002493 (Stone row, cairn and enclosures near Hook Lane, Erme Valley).

The Stone Rows of Great Britain website also includes an entry for this row - see Hook Lake Stone Row, which includes a description, a plan of the row and its relationship to the cairn, round house and enclosure and photographs. The SRoGB also includes a separate page for discussion about the view points that come into play as you move up and down the row. See Sea Views at Hook Lake.
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Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Creative Commons : Hook Lake North 2 Settlement at SX 6411 6539 Part of the boundary wall. Copyright Guy Wareham and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Bladup : Hook Lake Stone Row (Vote or comment on this photo)

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Bladup : Hook Lake Row, About a third of the way along the row, looking South, Like Sandy says it's a hard place to photograph because of the tufty grass (Vote or comment on this photo)

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Bladup : Hook Lake Row, The Stone row at the South as it merges with the later Southern Enclosure, Looking South (Vote or comment on this photo)

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Bladup : Hook Lake Stone Row, The Southern End of the stone row where it merges with the later Southern Enclosure (Vote or comment on this photo)

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by SandyG : The stone row approaching the later Bronze Age enclosure forming part of the Hook Lake settlement. The row was incorporated into the enclosure but no attempt made to remove it. The row would have made perfect building stone but was respected enough to be left alone. This respect however did not extend to the lengths that were in the way of their brand new enclosure. A very modern response to he...

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by SandyG : Double stone row leading away from the round house. The stone beside the ranging rod is part of the row and is built into the house. This relationship is very interesting as is the survival of the row in the vicinity of the settlement. The row was respected enough to be left standing but not sufficiently to stop the house builders from incorporating one of the stones in their new wall. View from ...

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by SandyG : Prehistoric stone round house which incorporates a stone row orthostat in its wall. The ranging rod denotes the position of the earlier stone row orthostat. View from north.

Hook Lake Row
Hook Lake Row submitted by Creative Commons : Cairn with stone circle. At the end of a stone row, on the south-east edge of the Hook Lake North 2 settlement. Copyright Guy Wareham and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Licence.

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 9m NNE 11° Brown Heath Cairn and Cist* Chambered Cairn (SX6411465327)
 79m NNW 335° Hook Lake Settlement* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX6408065390)
 271m NW 314° Erme Pound Cist Cist (SX63926551)
 484m NW 312° Erme Pound* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX6375965651)
 690m WSW 237° Upper Erme Cairns* Cairn (SX6352264958)
 788m WNW 289° Knackersmill Gulf North Cist Cist (SX63376559)
 821m NNW 335° Redlake Foot* Cist (SX63786607)
 1.0km SSW 213° Upper Erme Row* Stone Row / Alignment (SX63526447)
 1.1km SSW 213° Stall Moor circle* Stone Circle (SX6351764442)
 1.2km E 81° Western White Barrow* Cairn (SX6535465480)
 1.6km SSW 198° Blatchford Brook Foot Settlement* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX63566380)
 1.7km S 186° Dry Lake North Settlement* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX639636)
 1.8km ENE 65° Buckland Ford* Stone Circle (SX65746604)
 1.8km ENE 60° Huntingdon Warren Clapper Bridge* Ancient Trackway (SX65706619)
 2.1km ENE 61° Huntingdon Warren Settlement* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX660663)
 2.1km ESE 119° Knatta Barrow Ring Cairn (SX6595464218)
 2.3km SSW 200° Stalldown North* Cairn (SX63276323)
 2.3km SW 219° Ranny Brookhead Cist* Cist (SX62616354)
 2.4km E 92° Eastern White Barrow Cairn* Cairn (SX6653865157)
 2.5km SW 224° Ranny Brook Enclosure Ancient Village or Settlement (SX6232963551)
 2.5km NNW 348° Green Hill - Stall Moor* Stone Row / Alignment (SX63666779)
 2.6km S 173° Three Barrows West prehistoric settlement* Ancient Village or Settlement (SX6436762738)
 2.6km NE 51° Huntingdon Barrow* Cairn (SX6621266907)
 2.6km SW 226° Ranny Brook North Cist* Cist (SX62156355)
 2.7km NE 56° Huntingdon Warren Plane Crash Memorial Cross Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature (SX6642266804)
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"Hook Lake Row" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Re: Hook Lake Row by davep on Friday, 03 May 2013
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I visited this site yesterday (2nd May 2013), the following is a post I made on Facebook about the area - I thought it might be of interest:

I went for a long walk on south Dartmoor today. My mission was to take a look at the Hook Lake (Brown Heath) stone row - which is near the Erme Rings enclosures near Erme Pound.

I got a train to Ivybridge and walked up the east side of the River Erme passing the Butter Brook reservoir and Harford Gate. I ended up on the old Redlake rail track path and forked off across rough terrain towards where the Hook Lake (stream) meets the river Erme. The rail track was connected with the Red Lake china works that opened in 1910 and closed in 1933. From a distance you can see the outline of the Erme Rings in the landscape - the series of large enclosures near Hook Lake.

It is a curious place - a rich palimpsest as the archaeologists would say [translating into English: a rich mix of features from different historic periods]. The first thing that struck me was the area around the Hook Lake stream marked as Stony Bottom on the map - it has the unmistakeable appearance of a landscape created by tin streaming works (probably medieval or a bit later) as are the clearly man-made ridges north of the stream. Beyond these is the massive wall of the southern most of the Erme Rings.

From the eastern side of this first enclosure is the Hook Lake stone row. In itself quite a small and unremarkable stone row. I have taken some photos but I have not uploaded them as the stones are knee-height at most with most considerably smaller. The interesting thing about this row is that it merges into the wall of this enclosure. Then if you follow it along its length it physically touches a hut circle, with one of the stones of the row being incorporated into the hut circle. A short distance further is a cairn with a cist which is surrounded by a ring of stones, the cairn is more impressive than the row. This cairn is extremely close to the second of the Erme Ring enclosures - within 1 metre of the circuit wall which "only grudgingly avoids the terminal cairn" (Jeremy Butler in "Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities Vol. 4").

Richard Nichols Worth (father of Richard Hansford Worth, the author of "Worth's dartmoor") commented on this in the first of his series "The Stone Rows of Dartmoor" in the "Transactions of the Devonshire Association" as far back as 1892 - he concluded "the wall of the pound, which we must assume is of a later date". He would not have known what we now know, namely, that the stone rows date from the late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age where as the settlements, pounds and hut circles are from much later in the Bronze Age. R.N. Worth's observation was quite remarkable for the time. So those constructing these enclosures and huts would have done so up to potentially a thousand years or more later - clearly they had a certain disregard for the older monuments from a presumably forgotten age yet they did leave them in tact, the stones may have been incorporated into other structures but the stones of the row were not robbed out. Across the river from here the stone circle known as "The Dancers" (strictly speaking a carin circle) and the associated Erme stone row can be seen pricking the landscape as it disappears off into the distance (it is over 3Km long).

Further North from the second enclosure is the huge and quite fascinating structure known as Erme Pound. Again we have the meeting of different ages. This time there are tinners' huts (medieval or much later) incorporated within the prehistoric pound. Some of the internal walls look prehistoric except they are surprisingly rectangular which would suggest they were added by the tinners, others are the more typically rounded or curved walls of the prehistoric. Erme Pound itself is well known as being used as a "drift pound" much like Dunnabridge Pound. The drifts were organised efforts to impound stray cattle and livestock illegally grazing on the moor. The first recor

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