notes from my visit of Wednesday 11th June 2014.
Having walked all through Fernworthy Forest and out onto the open moor along then track to Teignhead farm, I then headed along the obvious trackway towards Sittaford Tor, fording the stream at a very surprising large stone slabbed ford, then the climb up to the top of the 538 metre tall grassy topped tor. The views from here are splendid in all 360 degrees, with today the army active out and about to the northwest on Hangingstone Hill. Looking around with my maps and directions, I was able to tell where the newly found stone circle should be, and indeed, having been there and on my way back, it is possible to see and make out some of the stones from the top of the tor.
The stone circle is found about 300 metres to the southwest of the tor, just to the north of the old reave or boundary wall which runs along the summit ridge. Following along this wall, it is easy to find the circle because of the presence of a standing stone built into the wall, probably originally an outlier for the circle. It is very wet and boggy up here even on a day like today, after many weeks of fine weather, so I suspect this is largely the reason for the circle having never been found before. Its positioned in what I would consider a good place for a Dartmoor stone circle, on a flat saddle of land spaced between various peaks. Sometime in the recent past, people have been and dug around each and every one of the stones, digging them out from any covering peat and bog, making the full circle clearly seen.
There are thirty two stones or holes cut into the moor, of which all but perhaps 2 have a stone or parts of stone to be seen in them, often laying in a pool of dark brown peat tea. As I walked around, I created a waypoint for each of the stones on my GPS, hoping to be able to plot them out on a map at home. There is a single gap on the southeastern side, nearby to the marker, which may at one time have been an entrance, although there is present a stone here positioned slightly within the circle. I paced out the diameter today to be 34 paces, but with much of the ground being so wet and boggy, my paces were short, so I estimate about 30 metres. The stones are fairly equally sized, being between 1.5 and 2 metres in height/length, and equally spaced, probaboy about 3 metres betwen each stone.
Other than myself, there are three lads out hiking, the army bashing and thumping away in the distance, the only other noises being the constant chirrupping of skylarks, the whooshing of the wind, and the squelching of my feet through the bog.
It is fabulous to have another stone circle here on Dartmoor, which apart from trhe fallen stones is pretty much complete, no doubt all becoming buried under a deeper bog before any destruction occurred, then becoming completely forgotten and unknown, missed by all the antiquarians, untill the last few years, the level of the bog presumably dropping sufficiently to allow recognition of the circle. As with the recently found circles and rows on Bodmin Moor, it makes me wonder just how many more there are out here waiting to be found. Good reason to keep on looking!
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road