Featured image of post The Merrivale Bronze Age Sun Calendar and Foggintor School
West Dartmoor

The Merrivale Bronze Age Sun Calendar and Foggintor School

An easy, short walk taking in a huge spread of history including the amazing Bronze age sun calendar.

A gentle 2 mile walk by Keith Ryan on  Feb 25, 2017.   Added on  Dec 06, 2024

Information

Map

Map of Route - Crown Copyright - Ordnance Survey Licence number 100047373

Introduction

This walk is mostly on open moorland avoiding steep hills. There is a huge amount of unique history here that cannot fail to make one pause and wonder. Stone rows, stone circles, carved granite and a school for the children of the quarryworkers at nearby Foggintor.

Parking

Park at the coordinates above, which is also SX 560 748. An isolated spot surrounded by trees on the B3357 road between the Dartmoor Inn, at Merrivale, and the turnoff to Princetown on the road to Two Bridges. This is marked by the yellow cross and the the P symbol on the map.

Leave the car park due west, running parallel to the road.

Apple Crusher

The Apple Crusher

The round object in the left foreground is often described as an abandoned runner, that is, the running wheel, that would be turned on an axle pulled by a horse with the stone running in a circular trough crushing apples for making cider: i.e. an abandoned apple crusher.

However, that is not accurate…

Rejected by the builder

In 1905, the Western Morning News and other papers published a story about this stone, claiming it was a buried quoit or dolmen with a worked capstone.

We can be fairly sure that this report was inaccurate thanks to William Crossing, who wrote in Dartmoor’s Early History & Medieval remains, Chap 12

eventually a man was found before any scientific paper was written who pronounced: “Twadn’t no old man cut thacky stone,” he said, “I cut’n.” This is an abandoned top-stone to a crazing mill, an old way of grinding tin ore before it was smelted.

Merrivale Quarry

Merrivale Quarry in the distance, with a hut circle in the foreground

In the distance we can see Merrivale Quarry.

William Duke opened this as “Tor Quarry” in 1876, its operations absorbing the old sett-making craft previously carried out under the Steeple Tors.

As well as cutting setts, Granite from this quarry was also used for Gravestones, agricultural rollers. It also provided the facing for the New Scotland Yard building in London.

The quarry closed in 1997, spending its final years dressing imported stone from Norway.

The name “Merrivale” for this part of Walkhampton Common is said to derive from “mara val” in old Cornish, meaning “plague market”. This is thought to have been corrupted from “tin market”, although “potato market” has also been suggested.

In times of the Black Death (1348-1353: when 50 million people died in Europe (Not to be confused with the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666), farmers left food here for Tavistock people who left coins as payment soaking in vinegar to clean them of the badness.

“Mar val” has also been interpreted as Mirey Vale.

The east end blocking stone of the northern stone row

Both stone rows are double - that is consisting of two rows of stones about a meter apart. This row has the ruins of a cairn, ring cairn or cairn circle associated with this end. (The ring of stones)

Image Copyright J Butler 1994. Reproduced by kind permission (ref. 29 Sept. 2012)

Nearest the camera, the east blocking stone of the longer southern row. Behind, the blocking stone of the northern row

A view along the southern row, looking to the west

The double nature of the row is seen well here. The first, larger, stone in the row casts its shadow quite symmetrically onto the blocking stone at mid-winter solstice.

Looking north over the east end of the northern row

Long Ash Leat is seen at the very bottom of the photograph and Roos Tor, SX 543 766, elevation 454 metres (1489 feet) on the skyline. Shillapark Farm is in the middle distance.

Image Copyright J Butler 1994. Reproduced by kind permission (ref. 29 Sept. 2012)

Looking west along the southern row to the small ring cairn and cist actually sited in the row. Someone very important?

The large cist beside the southern row

“Cist” comes from “Kistvaen - a stone coffin, from the Celtic cist, a chest, and maen, stone, ‘v’ being used as a mutation of ’m’.” . Source: Crossing’s Guide to Dartmoor, 2nd edition 1912, reprinted 1990, page 22)

“The cist … appears to have been intact until 1870, when the huge cover slab was split across the centre to make a pair of gateposts ‘by the occupants of the neighbouring public house’, according to Baring-Gould, and another was cut from the western side slab.” Source: Jeremy Butler, 1994, Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities Vol. 3 - The South-West, 8. Merrivale ceremonial centre (Figs. 44.1-44.10), page 30

The small cairn/cist in the southern row

The end of stone row 3, where it joins the southern row

The west end of the southern row, looking east. Four Winds (our car park, with the trees) can be seen in the distance

Alignments

Menhir

A view of the Merrivale stone circle and menhir. Midsummer sunset can be seen from the circle as the sun goes down in the notch of Middle Staple Tor

Menhir and circle looking west/north-west

Celtic (maen = stone + hir = long i.e. ’longstone’). The function of this stone has been suggested in Dartmoor Sun as a midwinter sunset marker when viewed from a leaning stone at SX 55461 74683.

Another view, with Great Staple Tor (left) and Roos Tor (right)

Long Ash Pits

Long Ash Pits

Early, possibly medieval or even earlier, tin workings where tinners collected alluvial deposits along stream beds.

The eroded tin ore could form quite pure tin gravel in such areas, having been washed down from the surrounding granite.

The early tinners “leated” water to a trench at the lower end of the ground, called a ’tye’ and water was used to wash away the lighter ‘gangue’ gravels.

This method left banks of waste behind. The area is surrounded by a scarp that shows the original level of the land and the depth of the deposits.

Tin streaming was often followed by open cast mining to go deeper, into big cuttings called “gerts”, but this is not seen here.

Another view of the tin workings including Pila Brook

It was presumably this water source that was diverted and used for washing away the lighter sediments so as to leave the heavier tin-bearing gravels and sands for smelting. This would have been among the earliest tin-extraction methods.

This photograph also shows the scarp surrounding this area that suggests how much the early tinners changed the look of the landscape.

Packhorse Trail

T-A marker stones along the Ashburton-Tavistock Packhorse Track

In the photograph above, a portion of the pillar has been enhanced to show the “A” more clearly, facing towards Ashburton.

In the Middle Ages,this trading route was very important, especially for wool and cloth or yarn, going via Sheepstor - which was famed for its sheep and wool.

The track was superseded by the turnpike road in 1792.

Strangers to the moor often had to tackle this high lonely route, this section over the Princetown area was the highest part and the most exposed. Princetown, or Thomas Tyrwhitt’s “Prince’s Town”, did not exist in those days.

Guide posts were erected along the way and what we see today are possibly the more ‘modern’ (1669) improved series, which were sponsored by Plymouth Corporation at the princely sum of £2.

The next marker stone, standing out on the skyline

Clapper Bridge

Small clapper bridge over Long Ash Leat at the back of Four Winds car park. On the skyline is Hollow Tor and the base of the tv mast

Looking over the wall at the back of the Four Winds site

This picture features a “pinch” stile that was to keep sheep out of the old school grounds, but allowing access to a path over the small clapper bridge crossing the Long Ash Leat.

This leat was built in the 1880s to take water Long Ash.

Four Winds School

Four Winds, once the site of Foggintor School, is now our car park

Four Winds was the site of Foggintor School, built 1914, opened April 1915 with 55 children from the nearby cottages associated with Foggintor and other quarries.

Mr & Mrs Stoyle were the teachers, it was a spacious building with a wood block floor and central heating - the pipes were used for warming their pasties.

There were periods of closure due to snow and whooping cough. The garden had bees, poultry, a goat and rabbits.

Besides the school building there was also School House, for the teachers. One section of the enclosure was the playing field.

The school was run throughout its history by Fred Stoyle, the youngest head-teacher in the country.

Their son, Ivan, planted the Christmas tree from 1924 in the school garden and this is the tree that stands there today - over a hundred years later.

After the school closed in 1936, the teachers’ house was renamed “Four Winds”. The school buildings were demolished in 1964 and the private house in 1965.

Stone from the buildings was used in the road modifications at Devil’s Elbow near Princetown. From this, we know that the tree is in the old garden and the other enclosure used to be the play area.

Foggintor Mission School

Before Foggintor School was built, there was another school opposite the entrance to the track to Yellowmead. This was in the Foggintor Mission Hall, built in 1887. It served also as a school from Aug. 1896, opening with 41 pupils.

It had 95 pupils in 1903 and closed in Sep. 1912. The building was demolished in 1965. The numbers of young children give some idea of the population in the area, associated mainly with the busy quarries.

References

These sources were used when researching this walk: