Listing
Search the List

What is Listing?

Listing Guidance

Apply for Listing

Missing Pieces Project

Blue Plaque Scheme
Listing

Find out about listed buildings and other protected sites, and search the National Heritage List for England (NHLE).

Find out about listing

Terracotta tiles on the roof of Saintoft Lodge, Newton-on-Rawcliffe, Ryedale, North Yorkshire. Grade II listed © Historic England Archive DP371715
Advice
Climate Change

Heritage at Risk

Your Home

Technical Guidance

Planning

Caring for Heritage

Constructive Conservation
Advice

See our extensive range of expert advice to help you care for and protect historic places.

Get our advice

A contractor cutting bricks for the wall of the partially-restored wild and natural walled garden at Warley Place, Brentwood. Explore our technical advice section © Historic England Archive DP313199
Research
Our Research Strategy and Agenda

Research Governance

Latest Research

Research Methods

Current Research

Research Results

Support & Collaboration

Inclusive Heritage

Heritage Counts
Research

Discover and use our high-quality applied research to support the protection and management of the historic environment.

Discover our research

Archaeologist Dr David Neal discussing his illustration of the mosaic being excavated at Rutland Roman Villa with members of the University of Leicester Archaeological Services team View image DP264265 © Historic England
Images & Books
Find Photos

Search All Publications

Buy Books

The Historic England Archive
Images & Books

Historic England holds an extensive range of publications and historic collections in its public archive covering the historic environment.

Browse our collections

Children play with a doll and a pram on the cobbled Church Path in Queen Camel, Somerset, in April 1953. At the far end of the path is the tower of the Church of St Barnabas, which dates to the 14th century. Photographer: John Gay Image reference: AA091596 © Historic England Archive
Services & Skills
Education

Grants

Our Planning Services

Training & Skills

Archive Services

Heritage Action Zones

Levelling Up Places Service
Services & Skills

Find out about services offered by Historic England for funding, planning, education and research, as well as training and skill development.

Learn about our services

Heritage Apprentices in a training session on the Researching The Historic Environment module and training in Architectural Photography. Find out more about Heritage Apprenticeships © Historic England Archive DP347660
What's New
News

In Your Area

Historic England Blog

Latest Research

Heritage Online Debate

Statements

Stay up to Date
What's New

Read about our current news, projects and campaigns nationally and in your area.

Catch up with what's new

Two horsemen reading The Sportsman, 30 Oct 1902, Farnborough, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. Part of the Alfred Newton and Sons collection. Source Historic England Archive. BB98/02592
About Us
What We Do

Who We Are

How We Are Funded

Contact Us

Careers

Volunteer with Historic England
About Us

Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England's spectacular historic environment.

Find out more

Mountbatten House (formerly Gateway House), Basing View, Basingstoke, the former headquarters for the paper merchants Wiggins Teape by Arup Associates. Listed at Grade II. © Historic England
Sign in
Manage my account

Sign out

Prehistoric and medieval settlements and their field systems at Hound Tor

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1016255
Date first listed:: 01-Nov-1966

User submitted image — Uploaded by Nicola Bigwood This photo may not represent the current condition of the site
View all

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1016255
Date first listed:: 01-Nov-1966
Date of most recent amendment:: 16-Jan-1998

Location

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

County:: Devon
District:: Teignbridge (District Authority)
Parish:: Manaton
National Park:: DARTMOOR
National Grid Reference:: SX 74423 78709

Reasons for Designation

Medieval rural settlements in England were marked by great regional diversity in form, size and type, and the protection of their archaeological remains needs to take these differences into account. To do this, England has been divided into three broad Provinces on the basis of each area's distinctive mixture of nucleated and dispersed settlements. These can be further divided into sub-Provinces and local regions, possessing characteristics which have gradually evolved during the past 1500 years or more. This monument lies in the extensive south-west Peninsula sub-Province of the Northern and Western Province, an area climatically, culturally and physically distinct from the rest of England. It includes varying terrains, from the granite uplands, through rolling dissected plateaux to fertile clay lowlands in the east. While nucleated settlements are present, notably in the Devon Lowlands and throughout the South Hams, many originated as small towns, and a high proportion may be of later date. Excluding only the moorland masses, the sub-Province is characterised by medium and high densities of dispersed settlements; indeed, some of the former industrial areas had densities as high as any in the country. The Dartmoor local region is a high, undulating moorland scenically and climatically distinct. The inner core, now treeless, is the ancient `Forest of Dartmoor', while an outer ring of commons provides grazing for a number of communities outside the Forest. Almost devoid of nucleated settlement, the region has extremely low densities of dispersed settlement. Scattered farmsteads and hamlets with irregular enclosed fields appear in peripheral valleys, while above the present head-dyke are numerous traces of abandoned settlements and fields.

In addition to the considerable evidence relating to the exploitation of this area during the medieval period, further information concerning earlier prehistoric settlement and land division survives. The prehistoric settlement has seen some damage as a result of disturbance during later periods, but despite this, enough remains to illustrate the character of the earliest visible settlements and fields. Although no longer permanently settled during the post medieval period, the monument continued to be intensively used and a number of cairnfields, shelters and extensive areas of ridge and furrow demonstrate the continuing agricultural role of this diverse archaeological landscape.

Details

The monument includes a partly enclosed stone hut circle settlement, associated field system, two medieval settlements and their fields together with post medieval cairnfields, ridge and furrow and shelters situated on the upper slopes of Hound Tor overlooking the valley of the Becka Brook. The partly enclosed stone hut circle settlement includes at least eight huts and two enclosures. Lying south of the settlement is an extensive field system including three major fields and an enclosure. The medieval hamlet of Houndtor, which is in the Care of the Secretary of State, includes four longhouses, one of which was converted into a barn towards the end of the settlement's life. Other buildings include three corn driers and four barns. The settlement was excavated during the 1960s and this work confirmed that it was abandoned in the mid-14th century. The fields surrounding the settlement are irregular in shape and appear to be the result of several phases of unorganised expansion and contraction. The medieval farmstead lies to the NNW of the hamlet and survives as a single longhouse, together with a barn and corn drier. An earlier stone hut circle was partly demolished to make room for the barn, whilst another hut appears to have been adapted and reused as an ancillary building. A number of irregular shaped fields lie in close proximity to the farmstead and many of these contain lynchets. After the settlements were abandoned in the mid-14th century the fields may have continued to be cultivated. Certainly in the post-medieval period continued interest in the area is witnessed by extensive areas of narrow ridge and furrow. Several groups of clearance cairns may also date to this time. In the area south of Greator Rocks, three shelters built against medieval boundary banks are probably also of post medieval date. The area of Greator Rocks itself is totally excluded from the scheduling.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:: 28786
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Butler, J, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, (1991), 51
Butler, J, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, (1991), 52
Butler, J, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, (1991), 55
Newman, P, Probert, S, Riley, H, Houndtor Down, Manaton, Devon, (1994)
Newman, P, Probert, S, Riley, H, Houndtor Down, Manaton, Devon, (1994)
Newman, P, Probert, S, Riley, H, Houndtor Down, Manaton, Devon, (1994)
Beresford, G, 'Medieval Archaeology' in Three Deserted Medieval Settlements On Dartmoor: Etc, (1979), 98-158
Beresford, G, 'Medieval Archaeology' in Three Deserted Medieval Settlements On Dartmoor: Etc, (1979), 98-158
Other
MPP fieldwork by S. Gerrard, Gerrard, S., (1995)

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 Culture, Media and Sport.