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 bank or enclosure. On Dartmoor, the
long tradition of building stone-based round houses is thought to have begun
in the second millennium BC, probably from about 1700 BC onwards.
This group of five unenclosed stone hut circles lies high on the east side
of the Erme Valley at the northern end of Harford Moor. The huts are set
into the slope and range in diameter from 4.5m. to 10m., with walls 1.5 to
2m. thick and up to a metre in height.

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.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

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 inwards. 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 patterns of land use through time.
These five hut circles on northern Harford Moor are a well-preserved example
of an unenclosed hut settlement and provide important evidence of how early
farming and stock-rearing communities lived on the Moor.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Devon County SMR (SX 66 SW-042),

Source: Historic England