Two hut circles on the right bank of Red Brook

Overview

Heritage Category: Scheduled Monument

List Entry Number: 1013035

Date first listed: 08-Nov-1991

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

National Park: DARTMOOR

National Grid Reference: SX 67049 62835

Summary

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Reasons for Designation

Dartmoor is the largest expanse of open moorland in Southern Britain and because of exceptional conditions of preservation, it is also one of the most complete examples of an upland relict landscape in the whole country. The great wealth and diversity of archaeological remains provides direct evidence for human exploitation of the Moor from the early prehistoric period onwards. The well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, major land boundaries, trackways, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains, gives significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land use through time. These two conjoined stone hut circles are well preserved and in association with the nearby enclosures, provide important evidence of how early farming and stock-rearing communities lived on the Moor.

History

Legacy Record - This information may be included in the List Entry Details.

Details

Low stone walls or banks enclosing a circular internal floor area form the remains of timber and turf- or thatch-roofed dwellings occupied by farmers of the prehistoric period. They may occur singly or in larger groups and were sometimes built within a surrounding boundary bank or enclosure. On Dartmoor, the long tradition of building stone-based round houses can be traced back to the second millennium BC, probably from 1700 BC onwards. These two hut circles adjoin each other, but are not enclosed and lie immediately above Red Brook along its right bank. The downstream hut is 8m in diameter and has walls 1m to 1.5m in width and up to 1m in height with an entrance flanked by orthostats in its south-west side. The upstream hut is 9m in diameter with walls of similar width which are up to 0.5m in height, no entrance is visible, but the hut is heavily overgrown and other features may be obscured.

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.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number: 10577

Legacy System: RSM

Sources

Other
Devon County SMR SX66SE-131,

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.