Where to Stay on Dartmoor

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The landscape of Dartmoor is of great archaeological importance, with many examples of prehistoric remains, cairns and tumuli - including Grimspound - possibly the most complete Bronze Age village site in England.

Dartmoor has over 10,000 entries on the County Sites and Monuments Register. There are over 1,000 Scheduled Ancient Monuments listed on he moor, a figure which is increasing each year. Prehistoric evidence of human activity on Dartmoor can be seen wherever you go, from standing stones, stone rows, barrows and kistvaens. In more recent centuries, the effects of farming, quarrying and tin mining dramatically altered the landscape.

Dartmoor features over 2,500 buildings listed as having an architectural or historic interest. The very process that created the granite plateau of Dartmoor (a large intrusion of a molten granite forming a basolith),endowed the area with a wealth of minerals; tin, copper, silver, lead and china clay, as well as the hard granite - used for buildings from the very earliest times and more recently times as an exportable commodity.

The quarries at Haytor produced the stone used in Nelson's Column, London Bridge and many other monuments. The 18th and 19th centuries saw the extraction of minerals reach a peak. Today the landscape is littered with the remnants of that era; the remains of old mines, engine houses and quarries scattered across the moor - poignant echoes of the areas industrial past.