Butterdon Down West Standing Stone (Menhir) : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

<< Our Photo Pages >> Butterdon Down West - Standing Stone (Menhir) in England in Devon

Submitted by Andy B on Thursday, 28 February 2019 Page Views: 4550

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Butterdon Down West
Country: England County: Devon Type: Standing Stone (Menhir)
Nearest Town: Moretonhampstead
Map Ref: SX74788840
Latitude: 50.681745N Longitude: 3.773803W
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

4 Ambience:

5	Superb
4	Good
3	Ordinary
2	Not Good
1	Awful
0	No data.

4 Access:

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.

3 Accuracy:

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

5

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lauraaurora visited on 4th Apr 2022 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 5 Access: 3

TheCaptain visited on 26th Feb 2019 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 3 Crikey, an easy to reach Dartmoor standing stone which has no pictures on the Portal, so I'd better go visit it. It's not the easiest place to park at Butterdon, but I find somewhere not blocking anything, and it’s a beautiful spot. Walk westwards up the lovely, almost tunnel like bridleway before getting onto the open downland, and head around the hillside until I find the stone, my first view of it being nothing like I was expecting, a tall thin curved shape presenting itself to me. The stone is taller than me, being just over 2 metres tall, and a nice granite slab, crystals sparkling in the bright sunlight, and a good crop of lichen hair on top. About 40 metres south from the stone is a fairly large triangular slab standing on edge. A closer look at this, and I am not convinced it is an old standing stone, perhaps more of a large slab once making up part of a reave or boundary, as it looks to be in a fairly straight line of some kind with many more large stones present. Further walking around on this hillide, and it is seen that there are lots of these stones over the place, and fairly obviously many of them being in straight rows with each other.

Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Condition: 4 Ambience: 4.5 Access: 3

**Butterdon Down West** submitted by TheCaptain : The stone is taller than me, being just over 2 metres tall, and a nice granite slab, crystals sparkling in the bright sunlight (Vote or comment on this photo)

Likely Standing Stone on the western slopes of Butterdon Down, a couple of miles north of Moretonhampstead in Devon.

From Pastscape Monument No. 445554: "A granite monolith situated on the lower west slope of Butterdon Hill. It is 2.3 meters high, tapering from a trigged base measuring 1.0 meters by 0.8 meters. The local farmer (at Bowden) maintains that it is a rubbing stone and cattle clearly use it as such. Nevertheless, it seems far too massive to have been erected for that purpose (there are enough smaller stones in the vicinity) and it has the appearance of a prehistoric standing stone."

A smaller triangular slab stands upright approximately 40 yards to the south and scattered around on the flanks of the hill are other smaller erect slabs, less convincing as true standing stones.

This stone is also featured on the Prehistoric Dartmoor Walks website - see their entry for the Butterdon Hill (nr. Moretonhampstead) Standing Stone. PDW also gives a link to the Devon & Dartmoor HER: MDV8278 (Standing stone on western side of Butterdon Down), which adds "this site is included in the local list of Nationally Important Dartmoor sites".

Note: On a gorgeous winters February day, I decided to find this Dartmoor standing stone which had no pictures on the Portal, and it’s a beautiful spot.
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