Cairn and cist 430m north east of Grimspound

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 provide 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. Cists are small rectangular stone structures used for burial purposes and date to the Bronze Age. On Dartmoor they are made up of regular stone slabs forming a box-like structure sometimes topped by a larger coverstone. Short cists survive as free-standing monuments, with no enclosing stone and earth cairn. On Dartmoor cists are also associated with cairns, ring cairns and cairnfield groups, but these free-standing examples form a separate group in their own right. Their longevity, having been in use for a millennium or so, provides insight into the range of ceremonial and ritual practices of the contemporary farming communities. The Dartmoor examples provide one of the best preserved and most dense concentrations of this class of monument in south-western Britain and, as such, a high proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of protection.

Despite partial excavation, the cairn and cist 430m north east of Grimspound survive well and will contain environmental and archaeological information relating to the monument and the landscape in which it was constructed. Deep peat deposits in and around the monument represent a particularly good source of information about the later prehistoric and earlier environment of this area.

Details

The monument includes a cairn containing a cist situated on a saddle between Hookney Tor and King Tor overlooking the valley of the Broadaford Brook. The cairn survives as a 5.6m diameter ring of edge set slabs standing up to 0.62m high surrounding a 0.6m high mound. The cist is situated slightly south of the cairn's centre and survives as a 1.2m long by 0.55m wide and 0.45m deep stone lined pit. Three slabs which partly obscure the cist represent the original coverstones. Slight mounds of material lying adjacent to the cairn on the north eastern and southern sides represent spoil thrown out during an earlier partial excavation.

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:

24099

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Books and journals
Butler, J, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities - The Second Millennium B.C. in Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities, Vol. 5, (1997), 219

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