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.
Earlier prehistoric hillforts are large fortified settlement sites dating to
the Neolithic period (c.3500-2000 BC). They may be recognized by single or
multiple rubble walls or earthen banks enclosing all or part of a hilltop. The
boundaries often vary in size, incorporate numerous small entrance gaps and
commonly include substantial natural rock outcrops and scarps in their
circuit. Ditches, sometimes similarly with intermittent breaks, occasionally
accompany the enclosing banks.
The hillfort enclosures, up to 10ha in extent, usually contain cleared and
levelled house platforms. The few recent excavations of this class of monument
have revealed numerous internal timber and stake-built structures and pits
associated with large quantities of undisturbed Neolithic settlement debris
including animal bone, charcoal, flint artefacts, pottery and stone tools.
Many of these finds or their raw materials were originally brought to the
hillforts from considerable distances away. Excavations have also produced
evidence for warfare at some sites.
Extensive outworks are associated with most of these hillforts, either roughly
concentric with the inner enclosure or connecting a series of related
enclosures.
Under twenty earlier prehistoric hillforts are known nationally, concentrated
in the uplands of south-western England from the Cotswolds and Dorset to west
Cornwall, with a very few isolated possible examples elsewhere in southern
England. They are a very rare monument type, highly representative of their
period as one of the major sources of information on social organisation and
interaction during the Neolithic period.
Earlier prehistoric hillforts sometimes incorporate small cairns, heaped
rubble mounds, some of which may be contemporary, but most of which are Bronze
Age (c.2000-700 BC). These were constructed as mounds of earth and rubble up
to 40m in diameter but usually considerably smaller. Sometimes a kerb of edge-
set stones bounds the mound's edges or crest of the mound. Burials were placed
in small pits, or on occasion within a slab-built box-like structure called a
cist, set into the old ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn.
Variations in cairn design include embanked examples surrounded wholly or
partly by an earth and rubble bank, also kerbed on one or both sides in some
cases. The considerable variation in form and associations of funerary cairns
provides important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices
and social organisation during the Bronze Age.
Distinctive hilltops were also one of several types of favoured site for
building chapels during the medieval period, mostly from the 12th-15th
centuries though some have earlier origins. Chapels, buildings licensed for
Christian worship but without parochial status, served a considerable range of
functions, with a corresponding diversity of form and location. Their
associations can be similarly diverse, including, for example, enclosures,
cemeteries, holy wells, hermitages and bridges. Of these, hilltop chapels,
commonly dedicated to St Michael, were one very small group. Although
estimates suggest there were about 600 chapels in medieval Cornwall, these
were thinly represented on Bodmin Moor where only 11 chapels are documented
other than by field-names alone. Of these, only three are considered to retain
medieval structural elements, and only one of these, on Rough Tor, is a
hilltop chapel.
This monument about the summit of Rough Tor has survived well. The earlier
prehistoric hillfort has not been excavated and survives little disturbed by
later activity, displaying intact many features distinctive to this class of
monument. Its incorporated cairns also survive substantially intact, their
range of size and visible detail demonstrating the nature and diversity of
funerary practices among prehistoric communities. This diversity is further
illustrated by the adjacent embanked and round cairns on the summit of the
Rough Tor outcrop itself. The medieval chapel foundations built into the
embanked cairn provide a rare example of a medieval hilltop chapel, the only
one known on Bodmin Moor. The chapel's proximity to the other broadly
contemporary ecclesiastical monuments on Rough Tor shows clearly an important
relationship between religious activity and the topography in the medieval
period. The development of that ritual relationship and of settlement with the
topography from early in the prehistoric period is well illustrated by the
superimposed presence within the monument of the prehistoric hillfort, the
cairns and the chapel.
Details
The monument includes an earlier prehistoric hillfort about the summit of the
prominent hill of Rough Tor on north west Bodmin Moor. The hillfort contains
numerous house platforms and includes multiple enclosing walls incorporating
eight prehistoric funerary cairns and a small slab-built chamber. A further
two cairns are located adjacent to the hillfort's south western end, the
larger incorporating the foundations of a medieval chapel and its enclosure.
Post-medieval activity within the monument is indicated by a number of
millstone roughouts and a modern regimental war memorial is situated within
the remains of the medieval chapel.
The hillfort is visible as a large, ovoid enclosure measuring 365m north east-
south west by up to 220m north west-south east externally, occupying a broad
saddle between the tor outcrops of Rough Tor and Little Rough Tor. The
enclosure is defined in most sectors by closely-spaced multiple lines of
heaped rubble and boulder walling, generally 2m-3m wide and 0.5m high but up
to 8m wide and 1m high, often incorporating inner and outer facing slabs. The
walling meets the base of the dense scree around the Rough Tor and Little
Rough Tor outcrops, incorporating them into the enclosure circuit but not
extending over them. Similarly a scarp of dense boulder scree and bedrock
outcrops completes the circuit over a break in the enclosure walling for 100m
SSE of Little Rough Tor. Smaller breaks also occur at several other points
where the walling incorporates natural spreads of boulders.
The hillfort's north west walling contains variously three or four wall-lines
over a combined width ranging from 15m to 35m. This north west wall
incorporates two entrance gaps, separated by the 80m central sector of the
wall. The north eastern entrance is an almost straight gap, 2m-5m wide,
passing directly through the multiple wall-lines and flanked by slight rubble
walls. The south west entrance, also 2m-5m wide, has a shallow `S-shaped',
hollowed course with traces of rubble flanking walls in places, but its
position is elaborated by several other features. These include a marked
thickening of the defensive line and the incorporation of contiguous rows of
large edge- and end-set slabs, called orthostats, up to 1.5m high, into the
multiple wall-lines approaching the entrance from each side. The outer three
wall-lines for 30m north east of the entrance are entirely formed of these
orthostats. This entrance is flanked by three similar small round cairns, one
on each side near its midpoint and one 6m to the south west. These survive
with sub-circular mounds of heaped rubble, 4m-5m in diameter and 0.3m-1m high.
The two cairns beside the entrance itself each have an outer kerb of edge-set
slabs. A small medieval or later shelter, 3.5m in diameter, has been hollowed
into the rubble where the outermost wall-line meets the entrance. The
hillfort's south east walling generally contains two wall-lines, 2m-15m
apart, with a third wall interposed between them at the southern end at the
site of a third entrance. Here the inner wall curves inwards to a 3m wide
break; minor breaks in the outer two walls produce a staggered approach. This
entrance is also marked by two small round cairns, located 1.4m apart against
the northern side of the interposed wall-line. The cairns survive with
circular, heaped rubble mounds, 4.25m in diameter, the western 0.3m high and
the eastern 0.6m high.
The enclosure wall and its incorporated outcrops encompass an internal area
of 4.4ha containing at least 30 small, rounded, levelled areas, 4m-15m across,
from which stone has been cleared to the edges. These areas, called house
platforms, were stances on which prehistoric timber houses and associated
structures were built. Most visible house platforms cluster in two areas, 11
on the slope immediately behind the south western of the two entrances in the
north west wall, and 13 similarly grouped behind the southern entrance. The
others form isolated examples or pairs in the north east of the interior and
against the south east wall. At least ten more house platforms and irregular
cleared areas are located between the wall-lines forming the south east wall
and against its outer side, while beyond this monument, at least another ten
house platforms are located on the hillslope to the south. The hillfort's
enclosure circuit incorporates three more broadly contemporary round cairns.
The largest crowns the natural tor outcrop of Little Rough Tor at the
hillfort's north east end. This cairn survives as a circular mound of heaped
rubble, 25m in diameter and up to 5m high, with considerable spillage of cairn
rubble down the steep sides of the outcrop. The top of the mound is roughly
flattened over a sub-circular area up to 12m in diameter, defined on most
sides by a kerb of edge-set slabs and coursed blocks protruding slightly from
the rubble surface. Limited stone robbing has disrupted the kerb and the
mound's surface on its ESE side. A much smaller round cairn is centred 40m to
the WNW, within the outer wall-line of the enclosure wall where it meets the
base of the Little Rough Tor outcrop. This cairn survives as a circular,
heaped rubble mound, 1.8m in diameter and 0.2m high. The third round cairn is
located at the south west end of the hillfort, on a small shelf among the
boulder scree and jointed granite outcrops at the eastern side of the massive
Rough Tor outcrop. It survives as a sub-circular heaped rubble mound, up to
11m in diameter and 0.6m high, from which some rubble has spilled down the
rock face to the east. An unrecorded antiquarian excavation has produced a
central hollow, 1m in diameter and 0.5m deep.
Incorporated into the natural line of boulders and scree defining the hillfort
interior south east of Little Rough Tor is a slab-built rectangular chamber
under a 1m high overhang along the south west edge of a natural outcrop. The
chamber's sides are defined by contiguous edge-set slabs, up to 0.8m high,
giving an internal area measuring 2.3m north west-south east by up to 1.2m
north east-south west.
Adjacent to the hillfort's south west end, about the summit of the main
outcrop of Rough Tor, are two more, adjoining cairns. The larger cairn has a
central mound and an outer bank, both of heaped rubble and situated on a
natural sloping terrace among the tor stacks of the summit itself. The central
mound measures 18m north west-south east by 15m north east-south west, rising
to 1.7m high on its north west side but level with the upper edge of the
bedrock scarp which defines its south east edge. The outer bank is located on
the edge of the terrace, 1m-5m beyond the mound's perimeter in the north west
quadrant only. This bank survives up to 3m wide and 1.4m high above its outer,
downslope, edge. A curving bank of rubble, 5m wide and 1m high, heaped against
the foot of the scarp face beyond the central mound's southern edge continues
the line of the outer bank in that sector. The adjoining cairn is located on a
slightly lower, narrow outcrop projecting north east from that occupied by the
larger cairn. It survives with a sub-circular heaped rubble mound, 12m in
diameter and up to 0.3m high, with a slight central hollow due to unrecorded
antiquarian excavation.
The medieval chapel was built into the central mound of the larger, embanked
cairn on the summit of Rough Tor. The southern part of the mound's rubble was
dug away to bedrock over an 8m diameter area to insert the chapel's wall. This
survives as a sub-rectangular foundation wall, 0.8m thick and up to 0.3m high,
of coarsely mortared granite blocks defining an internal area measuring 6.2m
east west by 2.9m north-south with an entrance gap 3.1m wide in the east of
the north wall. Beyond its east and north walls are traces of the chapel's
enclosure wall, surviving 0.7m wide and 0.3m along the east side and as a bank
1.7m wide and 1.5m high along the north side, defining an enclosure 9m square.
A track approaches the south west corner of the enclosure rising through a
cleft in the scarp face to the south via two rock-cut steps. In addition to
the surviving remains, historical records document the chapel's dedication to
St Michael and grants of licences for the chapel issued in 1378 and 1419.
During the 20th century, a bronze plaque war memorial dedicated to the 43rd
Division, Wessex Light Infantry, has been affixed within the southern part of
the chapel's interior.
Post-medieval stone-working activity within and beyond the monument is evident
from numbers of polygonal rough-outs for millstones, at least two of which are
located near the hillfort enclosure wall in the north east of the monument.
Beyond the monument, all aspects of the prominent Rough Tor-Showery Tor ridge
contain numerous and often extensive Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement,
ritual and funerary sites, clearly visible from this monument. The distinctive
hill of Rough Tor is also a focus for a small group of medieval religious
monuments; beyond the monument a holy well is located 330m NNE of the chapel
on Rough Tor's northern slope and a medieval grave marked by a roughly formed
cross-slab is situated 220m to its north on the upper north western slope of
Rough Tor.
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.
