Geometry on the moor

10.02.2025

Some would say February is not the best month to walk on Dartmoor, but my intention is to visit the many Stone Rows that line the landscape across this part of Devon. In winter the ground cover is low and some of the smaller stone rows are easier to see than during the rest of the year. I have a Collie dog with me for two weeks as my companion and for the first few days I’m walking with an old school friend and his Australian Kelpie .

We rendezvoused at Batworthy at the end of a narrow lane from Chagford. I knew the pull in spot and it was just as pretty as I’d remembered it with a cascading brook flowing through moss covered rocks by the side of a forest. We followed the brook up onto the moor and arced around the forest to a couple of rivers with clapper bridges, passing a herd of ponies on the way. Up a slope ahead we could see the stone circle of Scorhill, but a leat crossed our path and we had to find a narrow section to jump across it. I had been here four years ago with my brother and witnessed a strange geophysical phenomenon as we sat on one of the fallen stones. A rolling bank of cloud at ground level came towards us from the north west and suddenly the air in the circle dropped dramatically in temperature along with the level of my phone battery.

The sky was clear today as we entered what has become one of my favourite circles in the UK. I headed straight for my old friend, the tallest stone at eight feet high with a contorted bend and lean to the north. It stands in it’s own space while the other three or four foot uprights are bunched together. Of the thirty four remaining stones here, twenty five are still standing, with some of them distinctly triangular. This was my third visit and the conductive energies felt here have been different each time.

We followed one of two drove tracks that dissect the circle north to south, jumped the leat again and crossed back over the clapper bridges. Back along the edge of the forest we spotted the Tor of Kestor Rock to the left and knew a gentle straight climb ahead would bring us to the Shovel Down Megalithic complex. I had not seen this complex and was surprised when we came upon it so soon, a double stone row running four hundred meters up the hill ahead of us. On close inspection some of the stones were displaying a lovely blue heather rag lichen. At the top another double row from the left converged with it at Fourfold, a circle made up four small rings one inside the other. Beyond the circle the double row continued up the hill. Half way up it we became aware of a single row running parallel and coming in from the left. The double row ended at one of two cairns in the complex. Then after a gap of one hundred and fifty meters another double row started running up to the summit of the hill where the Longstone standing stone stood just over the rise. At ten feet tall the sides were fairly square with a tapered tip. Parish boundary markers had been scored into three sides. It was no surprise to see yet another double row now badly damaged, continue on towards the Fernworthy Plantation with the hidden Fernworthy complex inside it. There is a theory that the rows could have extended from Scorhill all the way to Fernworthy, a distance of over two miles. This length of stone row is not uncommon on Dartmoor.

A faint path continued on into the plantation where OS had us scrambling through dense ground cover of thick fallen branches and prickly brambles. We eventually emerged into a waterlogged clearing containing the large orderly circle of Fernworthy. Unlike Scorhill the surroundings here had drastically altered with trees now present all around it’s perimeter. It was a modern setting that had robbed the circle’s relationship to the distant contours in the landscape. The twenty six stones in a sixty two feet diameter were evenly spaced with some standing in pools of water. With the high moisture content present white crustose lichen coated the top half of many of the stones. We wandered the site and sat for a while at the nearby cairn. The atmosphere felt oppressive and claustrophobic. The forest had gained the upper hand here and had sucked all the character from this imprisoned complex. We were glad to get out on to the open moor again and to retrace our steps back to Batworthy.