by PeterC » 11:20 am
Brilliant questions, living daily amongst these things I forget everyone’s consciousness isn’t filled with granite in various arrangements.
‘Hill’ is a basic translation for tor, but really we are looking at a Rocky outcrop, often elevated, but not necessarily. Many outcrops here still don’t get the name tor and nor do some hills with outcrops get blessed with the name (for instance the Dewerstone is not known as Dewerstone Tor). But nevertheless a high point of moor with granite outcrop(s) is quite safely known as a Tor. And I thought that would be the easy question to answer….
The ‘enclosing’ part is accepted by archaeologists to be some of the earliest Neolithic constructing/earthworking and as important to the culture as the ‘causewayed enclosures’. How this conclusion is drawn I don’t know because I still don’t think anyone has a good idea what a causewayed enclosure was for anyway. For more information on this type of Neolithic construction consult the internet not me.
Depending on the shape of the Rocky outcrop it is ‘enclosed’ by stone and earth wall up to 4m high (Stowe’s Hill on Bodmin has a teardrop shape wall around the entire outcrop, the Dewerstone, with escarpments on two sides, just has a third side built up enclosing the outcrop). I believe only a few have been properly excavated and even then possibly not since the '20s. Some show occupation and some don’t, like many Neolithic sites, the purpose seems unclear.
Some of Cornwall’s tors seem to be on the Michael Line including the previously mentioned Stowes tor (the famous Cheesewring) with a Craddocks Moor stone circle only a stone's throw (sorry) further south west down the line.
Being pretty much all on moorland it is unsurprising many of these sites are associated with mining or quarrying.
As for the other Devon enclosed Tors I only know a small amount. One is Hound Tor rocks (not my side of the moor) and Whittor or White Tor near Brentor. Although not on either the Michael line or the proposed line they sit on high points on the edge of the moor, very useful if you want to avoid or get off the moor. Seeing as people still struggle now to navigate Dartmoor today, big beacon towers at any of these points would be pretty useful. Being at the edge of the moor and on high places they often overlook river valleys, so possibly the confluence is a nice bonus rather than the aim…
Now for some possibly meaningless observation - seemingly Brentor, Whittor, Merrivale monument and Walkhampton church make a nice semi circle surrounding the lower ground of which Tavistock sits in (an important stannary town for centuries and site of a Norman abbey)
On a personal note I do not believe Merrivale is Dartmoor’s Carnac. You’d have to be a blindly proud Devonian or a cynical and literally blind Breton to draw that conclusion. It has an array of different yet small monuments and the double stone rows, although very pretty, are fairly underwhelming (if not minuscule compared to Carnac) in scale of stones and the overall monument. Having an array of monuments seems to suggest to me that Merrivale had an array of uses but what they are is currently beyond me. Some archeoastronomy has been carried out in the book Dartmoor Sun, which is not a book I set much store by. But I’ll leave that up to the readers.
I believe some people are currently working on some film there exploring the plague market idea; notes for ME2, Merrivale is 5 miles from Tavistock but it is fact surrounded by farms rather than nowhere near them.
