Reasons for Designation
Bodmin Moor, the largest of the Cornish granite uplands, has long been
recognised to have exceptional preservation of archaeological remains. The
Moor has been the subject of detailed archaeological survey and is one of the
best recorded upland landscapes in England. The extensive relict landscapes of
prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date provide direct evidence for human
exploitation of the Moor from the earliest prehistoric period onwards. The
well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, field
systems, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains
provides significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land
use through time.
Elaborate complexes of fields and field boundaries are a major feature of the
Moor landscape. Several methods of field layout are known to have been
employed in south-west England during the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC),
producing both regular and irregular patterns of field plots, with differing
degrees of conformity of orientation and arrangement and containing fields of
various shapes and sizes bounded by stone or rubble walls or banks, ditches or
fences.
These field systems often incorporate or are situated near stone hut circles,
the dwelling places of prehistoric farmers on the Moor, mostly also dating
from the Bronze Age. The stone-based round houses survive as low walls or
banks enclosing a circular floor area; the remains of a turf or thatch roof
are not preserved as visible features. The huts may occur singly or in small
or large groups as settlements and may occur in the open or be enclosed by a
bank of earth and stone.
Prehistoric enclosures may form an integral part of hut circle settlements, or
they may adjoin field systems or occur in the open. These discrete plots of
land enclosed by stone walls, or banks of stone and earth, were constructed as
stock pens or as protected areas for crop growing and were sometimes
subdivided to accommodate animal shelters and hut circle settlements for
farmers and herders. The size and form of enclosures may therefore vary
considerably, depending on their particular function.
Prehistoric field systems, hut circles and enclosures are important elements
of the existing landscape and provide evidence on the organisation of farming
practices and settlement during the prehistoric period.
The relatively unintensive post-medieval land use of upland areas which has
allowed the preservation of much surviving prehistoric settlement and field
system evidence, has also permitted the survival of medieval remains which
often abut or impinge on those earlier, prehistoric, remains. Such medieval
remains may include cultivation ridging, whether enclosed or unenclosed, and
various forms of field system and settlement. Regular enclosed field systems
are one such field system type known to have been employed during the later
medieval period (AD 1066-1550). They comprise a methodically-arranged
collection of field plots in which individual holdings were systematically
distributed through different parts of the field system's overall area. This
was achieved by several known methods of field layout depending on whether the
field system was superimposed on an earlier, sometimes unenclosed, field
system or whether it was newly established on the area covered, and whether or
not the field system comprised a cohesive or dispersed collection of plots.
The resulting regular enclosed field systems often include collections of
elongated strip-form plots, each plot representing one unit of an individual's
holding.
The economic strategies by which medieval communities exploited their
agricultural resources also varied and had a strong influence on the nature of
field system employed, though no fixed relationship existed between the
economic strategy and field system type. One common strategy employed in the
medieval period was the infield-outfield system. By this method, the infield,
an area of arable land closest to the settlement, was intensively cultivated,
regularly manured and frequently cropped, while in the outfield, a more
distant arable block, land was infrequently cropped, with long fallow periods
under pasture to restore the fertility of the soil.
Medieval field systems sometimes survive in association with broadly
contemporary settlements containing longhouses, one of the several distinctive
forms of medieval farmhouse which may occur individually or grouped to form
villages. Rectangular in plan, usually with boulder or rubble outer walls and
with their long axis orientated downslope, the interior of longhouses was
divided into two separate functional areas, an upslope domestic room and a
downslope stock-byre, known in south-west England as a shippon. The division
between the two, and their access, was usually provided by timber screens or
sometimes rubble walling, running transversely across the longhouse, linking
opposed openings in the long side-walls. Longhouses may be accompanied by
ancillary buildings, separated slightly from the farmhouse itself, which may
have served as fuel stores or occasionally contain ovens and corn-drying
kilns. The earliest known longhouses date to the 10th to 11th centuries AD but
their main period of construction was during the later 12th to 15th centuries
AD.
Medieval field systems and longhouse settlements also form an important
element of the existing landscape, providing information on the organisation
of medieval farming and settlement, its expansion onto the uplands and
providing evidence for the successive changes in land use that have affected
the Moor.
Extraction of tin ore during the medieval period was undertaken by a variety
of methods depending on the nature of the ore's occurrence, whether in the
parent rock, deep beneath the ground or shallow, or in weathered deposits,
either close to the site of weathering or transported to valley floors with
the alluvium. Streamworks were a principal method of exploiting ore in
weathered deposits. The ore deposits were exposed and separated using water
brought or diverted to the desired location in channels, called leats. The
manner of working the deposits progressed upwards and outwards along a valley
or hillslope, allowing gravity to sort the tin ore from the waste and enabling
the latter to be deposited as spoil over the areas already worked. Various
methods of manipulating the water supply were employed, each producing a
distinctive pattern of spoil heaps.
This monument on the Brown Gelly Downs contains unusually well-preserved
evidence for the sequence of prehistoric and medieval phases of land use on
this hillside. The prehistoric enclosed hut circle settlement and the medieval
longhouse settlement, its associated field systems and adjacent tin
streamworks survive especially well, little affected by later activity. The
good survival, in so closely-defined an area, of multiple phases of land use
during both the prehistoric and medieval periods is rare. As a result the
monument provides an unusually full illustration of the development of
settlement and farming practices from the Bronze Age to the present day. The
tin streamworks adjacent to the medieval field system also survive well.
Research on the streamworks in this monument has formed the basis for a
widely-used system for their classification. They are not only significant as
the earliest historically-recorded examples on the Moor which are still
locatable, but their recorded operation contemporary with the longhouse
settlement's occupation gives rare evidence for the relationship between the
medieval farming and tinning industries. The survival of the medieval field
system adjacent to the streamwork's north-east edge defines the original
extent of the land pertaining to the monument's longhouse settlement, and
together with the proximity of the deserted longhouse settlement to the east,
it illustrates the broader pattern of medieval settlement and agriculture in
this upland environment.
Details
The monument is situated on the eastern slope of the Brown Gelly Downs and
part of the adjacent valley to its east, on southern Bodmin Moor. It includes
two adjacent prehistoric stone hut circle settlements on the lower slope of
the Downs, one unenclosed and dispersed around traces of a broadly
contemporary field system, the other forming a dense aggregation of hut
circles enclosed within a network of small plots and enclosures. Two earlier
medieval linear boundaries cross the unenclosed prehistoric settlement, the
lower boundary associated with contemporary cultivation ridging and a deserted
farmhouse. The northern part of the enclosed hut circle settlement was
incorporated into the inner field block of a later medieval deserted longhouse
settlement located to the north-east. The settlement's outer field block
extends over the north-east slope of the Downs. Medieval tin-workings, called
streamworks, occupy the valley floor adjacent to the north-east edge of that
outer field block. On the opposite side of the valley floor, the streamworks
are also adjacent to the south-west edge of a medieval regular enclosed field
system forming part of the cultivated land of a second deserted medieval
settlement located beyond the monument to the east.
The unenclosed hut circle settlement contains at least 25 hut circles spaced
3m to 65m apart over 4.5 hectares of a gently sloping terrace on the eastern
midslope of the Downs. The hut circles survive with walls of heaped rubble and
boulders, up to 2m wide and 0.6m high, occasionally incorporating edge-set
inner facing slabs. The walls define circular or ovoid internal areas in the
range 2.5m to 6.5m in diameter, usually levelled into the hillslope. Entrance
gaps, up to 0.5m wide, are visible in four hut circle walls, facing east or
north-east and flanked in two cases by edge-set slabs. Several hut circle
walls have larger breaks reflecting damage during later occupation of this
hillside. Three hut circles have adjoining sub-circular annexes,
similarly-walled, with internal diameters from 1.5m-3m. The unenclosed
settlement is bounded to west and north-east by dense natural scree, called
clitter, into which several of the western peripheral hut circles are built,
but the terrace about which the settlement is focussed is relatively free of
surface stone. This terrace contains a scatter of at least seven discontinuous
rubble banks, up to 1.5m wide, 0.6m high and 55m long, considered to derive
from a prehistoric field system, broadly contemporary with the unenclosed hut
circle settlement and whose network of banks was disrupted during later
prehistoric and medieval clearance and stone-robbing on this hillside.
Immediately beyond the clitter north-east of the unenclosed settlement, the
enclosed hut circle settlement occupies 3ha of the Downs' lower eastern slope,
extending over 320m along the slope in a band up to 130m wide. This settlement
contains at least 39 hut circles, generally more massively constructed than
those in the unenclosed settlement. These hut circles survive with heaped or
coursed rubble and boulder walling, up to 2m wide and 0.9m high. The walls
define circular or ovoid internal areas ranging 3m to 12m in maximum diameter,
levelled into the slope, with only two under 5m in internal diameter. The
walls frequently incorporate inner and outer facing slabs and entrance gaps
are visible in 23 of the hut circles, orientated downslope, between north and
south-east. The entrances are often flanked by end-set slabs, called
orthostats, and sometimes by thickened walling. At least seven hut circles
have adjoining circular or ovoid annexes which, together with most of the hut
circles, are integrated into a network of small, contiguous rubble-walled
garden plots and enclosures. This network of walling extends throughout much
of the settlement's area, broken only near the centre of the settlement where
a spread of uncleared dense clitter considerably reduces the settlement's
width. At least six enclosures are perceptible, usually ovoid and up to 0.1ha
in area, but many of the garden plots are irregular, often smaller than the
hut circles themselves. The hut circles are very closely spaced, several
adjoining, most only 2-4m apart and none over 25m from its nearest neighbour.
The walling both of the hut circles and the settlement's network of plots and
enclosure indicates that the total pattern of walling visible in this
settlement results from a sequence of accretion and alteration. The many
differences between this and the unenclosed settlement on the midslope terrace
are considered to indicate their respective construction during differing
phases of prehistoric land use. Three more hut circles occur up to 180m NNW of
the enclosed settlement, 25m-100m apart in a line roughly along the contour.
These hut circles are situated in an area of medieval cultivation and
enclosure that has partly robbed their walling and disrupted their
relationship to the other nearby prehistoric features.
During the medieval period, further phases of land use development are evident
in the site. An earlier medieval feature is an almost straight linear boundary
which extends NNE-SSW over 709m roughly along the contour, across the Downs'
eastern midslope, crossing the centre of the unenclosed hut circle settlement.
The boundary is visible as an earth-and-rubble wall, up to 1.25m wide and 0.5m
high where unmodified by later refurbishment. For most of its length it is
accompanied by a ditch, up to 1.75m wide and 0.3m deep, along its western,
uphill, side. This boundary forms the upper limit of several areas of medieval
cultivation ridging visible on this hillside, indicating a function to
demarcate cultivatable land on the lower slope from pasture on the midslope.
It also defines the eastern side of a pasture belt along the eastern slope of
the Downs. The western side of this belt is marked by a second, almost
parallel, linear boundary running 45m to 70m west, up the slope, generally
following the lower edge of dense clitter on the flanks of Brown Gelly hill.
The northern end of this western boundary meets a block of medieval strip
fields described below. The southern ends of these boundaries flare to over
100m apart, providing a funnel-shaped entrance to facilitate driving stock
between them. The pasture belt defined by these paired linear boundaries is
also considered to have defined a routeway for stock through the cultivated
lower slopes of the Downs to the pasture on the Higher Langdon spur to the
north-east.
The cultivation ridges associated with this early medieval phase survive as
areas of contiguous, almost straight, parallel, low earthen banks, 1m-2.5m
wide and up to 0.2m high, unenclosed except by the linear boundary forming
their uphill limit. The main area of ridges extends over 1.5ha running up to
the northern part of the linear boundary. A second area of ridging, visible
over 0.5ha, is near the north-east edge of the unenclosed prehistoric
settlement; further intermittent traces are visible to the south within the
eastern part of that unenclosed settlement. A deserted medieval farmhouse
within this zone of cultivation ridging is considered to belong to this early
phase. Situated at the north-east edge of the prehistoric unenclosed
settlement, it survives with a coursed rubble and spaced boulder wall, up to
1.5m wide and 0.7m high, defining an internal area measuring 7.5m north-south
by 3.5m east-west. An entrance gap, 0.5m wide and flanked by edge-set slabs,
is located in the northern half of the east wall. The northern end of the
interior, beyond the entrance, narrows to a width of 2.25m. Later medieval
occupation within the monument includes a deserted longhouse settlement with
its abandoned inner and outer blocks of fields on the east and north-eastern
lower slopes of the Brown Gelly Downs. The deserted settlement contains two
longhouses situated 40m apart along the foot of the eastern slope of the
Downs. Each longhouse survives with walling of coursed rubble and boulders,
accompanied by later tumble, defining an elongated rectangular outer wall
orientated directly downslope, WSW-ENE.
The northern longhouse measures 24m by 6m externally and shows evidence for
some modification before abandonment. The upslope, western, half of its plan
formed the domestic quarters totalling 10m by 4m internally, with a transverse
wall dividing a western room, 2m long, from the remainder. A cross-passage
separating the domestic quarters from the shippon, or stock-byre, was blocked
and the former shippon, measuring 5m by 3.5m internally, was incorporated into
the domestic quarters. A new shippon of similar dimensions was built onto the
eastern end of the original longhouse plan. This longhouse has a row of four
contiguous ancillary buildings parallel to and 1.5m-2m beyond its northern
wall. The row is up to 6m wide and extends over 22.5m, subdivided by
transverse walls into the four structures, 3m-7m long internally. The western
two structures were walled on all sides while the eastern two were open on
their southern sides.
The southern longhouse measures 19m by 7m externally, its plan affected by a
later medieval building built into its western half after abandonment, robbing
its walls of some stone. A gap near the centre of the longhouse's northern
wall marks the cross-passage between the domestic quarters and shippon. This
longhouse has two adjoining ancillary buildings, near-parallel to and 1m-2.5m
beyond its southern wall. Their walls total 15m east-west by 5.5m north-south.
The western building, measuring 10m by 3.5m internally, was linked by a
doorway, later blocked, to the eastern building which, though of similar
width, only survives for 4m to the ends of its robbed walls.
Five contiguous small yards and garden plots, defined by slight rubble
walling, extend between the longhouses and up to 20m to their east, completing
the 0.3ha extent of the settlement's farmyard area. Besides the surviving
surface remains, this settlement is also recorded in medieval historical
documents; c.AD 1200 it was described under the name `Breinegelou', and a
reference dated 1283 states the settlement as held by `Reinbald de Brongelli'.
By 1443, a reference to `Overabrongellol' implies that by then the
settlement's `Brown Gelly' element had become shared with another settlement,
possibly a deserted medieval settlement located across the valley, 300m to the
north-east beyond this monument.
The settlement's farmyard area is located in the north-east corner of an
almost square enclosure of 1.75ha forming the regularly cultivated and manured
infield of the settlement. The enclosure, measuring up to 133m north-south by
145m east-west, is defined by an earth-and-rubble wall up to 1.5m wide and
0.4m high, generally with an outer ditch up to 1m wide and 0.3m deep. Its
western wall re-uses 110m of the eastern linear boundary from the earlier
medieval phase and the infield encloses the southern part of the larger area
of ridge-and-furrow whose limit that boundary had defined.
The infield's south-west sector encloses the northern sector of the
prehistoric enclosed hut circle settlement, robbing some hut circle and plot
walls for the medieval walling, but refurbishing others and incorporating them
into the edges and corners of three small cultivation plots of up to 0.2ha
each. These plots subdivide the infield's south-west quarter and bear traces
of cultivation ridging. A hut circle beside the infield's southern wall was
rebuilt as a medieval ancillary building with coursed walling up to 2m wide
and 1m high. The infield wall along this south-west quarter was converted into
a distinctive stock-proof wall-type called a corn-ditch, visible as a rubble
bank up to 1.75m wide and 0.75m high, faced on its outer side only by a
vertical wall of coursed rubble, impeding stock from entering the infield. Its
inner side was a more gently-sloping earthen bank, facilitating the removal of
any stock that did cross the bank. A slight field bank also extends north from
the infield, crossing the north-west part of the earlier cultivation ridges
and ending on a network of small slight-walled plots.
North-west of the infield, the settlement had a much larger outfield block,
subject to less regular and less intensive cultivation and subdivided as a
regular enclosed field system. The outfield occupies 7ha of a north-east lower
slope of the Downs. It forms a sub-rectangular block up to 330m north-south by
245m east-west. Its southern side, the southern part of its western side and
its surviving eastern side are defined by almost straight walls of heaped
rubble, up to 1.25m wide and 0.5m high. An outer ditch, up to 1.2m wide and
0.25m deep, accompanies much of the southern and western walls. The rest of
the outfield's western and northern sides are defined by a broad, flat-
bottomed ditch up to 7m wide and 0.5m deep.
The outfield is subdivided into twelve long narrow strips, 12m-20m wide, by
north-south rubble walls up to 1.25m wide and 0.5m high. In its southern
sector, the outfield contains disrupted fragments of earlier banks and the
northern of the line of prehistoric hut circles described above. Elsewhere,
the strips contain numerous small rubble mounds, up to 2m in diameter and 0.5m
high but often much smaller. These mounds, called clearance cairns, contain
surface stone and rubble from earlier features cleared in advance of the
medieval cultivation.
The outfield's eastern wall runs 7m-13m west of the northern end of the
earlier medieval linear boundary. This eastern wall also extends 20m beyond
the south-east corner of the outfield, ending near the infield's north-west
corner, showing the integration of the infield-outfield layout and the
maintenance of a through-route for stock to the pasture on the Higher Langdon
spur.
The outfield's north-east edge is crossed by medieval tin-miners' excavations,
called streamworks, exploiting tin ore that had eroded from the parent rock
and accumulated in the slight valley between the Downs and the spur to the
north-east. The streamworks adjacent to the outfield exploited two portions of
the valley floor, linked by a water-course, called a leat, draining water from
the upper portion to supply it to the lower.
The lower streamworks cover 0.9ha, extending at least 230m along the valley,
its limit along each side marked by steep scarps, up to 2m high and 20m-70m
apart. The excavated valley floor between the scarps contains groups of
distinctive parallel linear spoil dumps. The dumps are either straight and
parallel to the length of the overall streamworks, termed `Type B'
streamworks, or curved at their upslope ends and straight at their tails,
termed `Type C' streamworks. They are generally 3m-4m wide, 1m high and 20m-
40m long. Each linear dump lies alongside a water channel from one stage in
the deposit's exploitation, the adjoining dump away from the valley midline
being formed during the next stage when the water was channelled further out.
A leat, up to 3m wide, supplying water to the upper end of these lower
streamworks extends for 160m north-west up the floor of the valley, passing
the northern ditch of the medieval outfield, to drain the lower end of the
upper streamworks.
The upper streamworks cover 0.4ha, extending along 160m of the slight upper
valley. Similarly characterised by scarps along each side, up to 35m apart,
its linear dumps are largely of the straight, Type B, form. Near the head of
this streamworks is an earth-and-rubble dam fronting a sub-rectangular
reservoir, 40m long by 20m wide, deriving from a late phase in the
streamworks's operation. A further leat, 40m long, feeds water to the
reservoir from the saddle of the hill to the north.
These streamworks on the Brown Gelly Downs are the earliest historically-
recorded tin workings on Bodmin Moor whose location may be positively
identified, being specifically mentioned in the reference of AD 1283. A record
of AD 1513 describes the bounds of the tin workings on the Downs, including
the streamworks on this slope, giving their owner as one James or Jacob
Ludgar.
The building constructed in the western half of the deserted settlement's
southern longhouse is considered to have been a dwelling and store associated
with the operation of these streamworks. The building survives with coursed
rubble walling, up to 1.3m wide and 1m high. Its sub-rectangular outer wall
measures 11.5m east-west by 5m wide externally. The interior has two
transverse partition walls, 0.6m apart, each leaving a doorway against the
north wall, producing an eastern room, measuring 4.5m by 3m internally, and a
western room, measuring 2.75m by 2.25m internally. The eastern room also has
an external doorway in its north-east corner.
The north-east scarp of the lower streamworks crosses the south-west corner of
a medieval regular enclosed field system on the south-west slope of the broad
spur projecting east from the Downs. The field system survives over 1.8ha,
containing banks of earth-and-rubble, up to 2m wide and 0.5m high. The banks
define a succession of shallow `S-shaped' strips, from 16m to 60m wide,
running south to the foot of the slope from a common boundary about the 255m
contour level, near the crest of the slope. Three such strips survive; others
formerly extended the field system east along the slope to a deserted
settlement beyond this monument on the southern slope of the spur but those
strips have been effaced by recent pasture improvement. Each strip is divided
into two plots, of 0.12ha-0.4ha, by a cross-bank. The western two strips share
a common cross-bank running obliquely to their long axis while the eastern
strip has a lower, transverse, cross-bank. The boundary between the eastern
strip and the western two has a western ditch, up to 1.5m wide and 0.3m deep,
considered to mark the former western limit of the field system, to which the
western two strips were later added. The plots contain many clearance cairns,
mostly up to 2m in diameter and 0.5m high, but the western strips contain two
larger rubble mounds, up to 7.5m by 6.5m across and 0.5m high, hollowed about
their centres.
All modern post-and-wire fences, gates and gate fittings; the abandoned iron
pasture-roller near the enclosed hut circle settlement, and the surfaces of
the modern tracks across the lower streamworks and across the leat linking the
lower and upper streamworks are excluded from the scheduling but the ground
beneath these features, including walls and hedgebanks, is included.
MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.
