At the edge of a Chasm

18.02.2025

I spent a windy night at the a car park next to the Lee Moor China Clay Quarry in the Southern region of Dartmoor. My day started with a walk from Emmett’s Cross along the side of the perimeter fence of the quarry, with ‘Danger’ signs every hundred yards. At one point the path converged very close to the quarry edge and the vastness of the industrial scaring became alarmingly apparent. Not very far on from here were the now familiar features of the Dartmoor landscape. Amongst the fern, moss, heather and gorse a few leats needed to be negotiated before arriving at Trowlesworthy, a megalithic complex that occupies the slopes of a Tor with the same name.

The first structure I came upon was the Cairn Circle known as the Pulpit. It had a diameter of just six and a half metres and was pretty much intact with all it’s stones still upright. The centre of the circle was undulating and very waterlogged. The tallest stone had a narrow base and bulbous top which looked heavy enough to snap off at any moment. It leant at an acute angle and marked the point where the start of the East Row began. It was a double row of knee high stones that descended down the hill and was dissected in two places by leats, one dry and one in full flow with high banks. The banks were too high to jump across so I followed it north to an easier crossing point to find the West Row which ran perpendicular to the East Row and had a small Cairn Circle of it’s own. Again the row began at a conspicuously larger stone and ran for eighty metres down the slope in a westerly direction. At the far end I could see a triangular terminal stone. It was a fascinating layout where the rows were configured against the norm of a parallel pattern, made all the more complicated by the addition of the Leats.

I knew there was a community here as evidence of a settlement had been found. For a short time I saw smoke rising from hut circles, people chopping wood and tending to their animals. And then as I walked back along the perimeter fence I was brought back with a jolt as I peered into the chasm of the quarry.