Details

Low stone walls or banks enclosing a circular 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 tradition of building round houses can be traced back to the
second millennium BC, probably from about 1700 BC onwards.
These three unenclosed hut circles lie on the edge of the scarp above the
west bank of the River Erme, north of Lower Piles newtake. Set into the
hillside and now covered with dense bracken, they have coursed walls with
some orthostats and entrances and are on average 9.5m. in diameter.

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 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.
This is a well-preserved example of a small group of discrete hut circles
and provides important evidence of how early farming and stock-rearing
communities lived on the Moor.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
Devon County SMR,

Source: Historic England