Man cannot plan the world without designing himself ...

At the time he took his land, he already decided the plan of his life and he measured the earth accordingly and placed the ground plan of his historical existence within it.
stream

grimspound
Bronze Age, 2500-600 b.c

houndtor
Early Medieval, 1250 - 1350 a.d

higher uppacott
Medieval, early 15th century

lower jurston farm

16th century till 21th century

bank barn ground floor cow house

livier
2

longhouse shelter shed

Rudolf Schwarz, the Church Incarnate 1958

plan
1500-1750 : the division between farmhouse and cowhouse. Later, they may house other livestock in separated buildings. 1750- 1820 : as the new farming system increased the demands of the farmers on the farmstead. As a crop grows, he needed more storage for more produce.

settlement plan
22 20 21 1 3 19 18 16 4 11 14 13 8 7 9 12 15 17 6 5 24 23
drawn from G.Beresfords original

shippon
Phase 1

section,

15th century

hearth

Is poorly lit and aired by the slit windows.

drawn from Dartmoor National Park documents

used to be cart shed

garden

granary and stable

compound plan
drawn from R. Hansford Worths original

10

entrance

The wall was thought to be made up of 2 concentric rings, with a gap in the middle [each about 3 feet thick]. But there's another assumption that the wall was a solid one, 9 feet wide and 4/5 feet high.

B1 - B3 : corn drying kiln that were built later when the weather deteriorated again.

The village is located in a well-drained hillside. The buildings were arranged closed to each other with a few small gardens between them. The gardens were used to grow vegetables, [beans and peas] and also herbs for flowering food and as medical remedies.

section,

16th century

drawn from Dartmoor National Park documents

stable

livier shippon
Phase 2

hearth

The shippon floor slopes to the south, a practical arrangement that facilitate drainage leading to a hole in the end of the wall and from there to the dung pit outside.
new material

thatch roof

bank barn

section,

late 16thcentury

drawn from Dartmoor National Park documents

A house
cooking hole

inner room
Phase 3

hall

shippon
chimney, made of large, squared [ashler] blocks of granite

entrance
9 to 15 feet

hearth

The house is vary in size, probably had walls up to 6 feet high, a thatch roof with wooden door frames. The windows would have been small, high and unglazed and the interior of the houses would have been smoke-blackened and very dark.

low partition

The insertion of a fireplace and chimney stack in the hall might have been to show piece and status symbol.

longhouse

back elevation
farmstead as a whole The more recent the farmhouse, the less likely is any association with the farmyard.

The design of the farm buildings are closely related to the functions to be performed in them and so are the arrangements of the

section, early 17

th

century

drawn from Dartmoor National Park documents

platform

hut 3
porch
drawn from R. Hansford Worths original hut plans

bed

bed living

hay

house 3,
11

Phase 4

later phase

shippon inner room

14

Grim is an old name for the devil and was often used by the Saxons to describe prehistoric earthworks, which they evidently regarded as 'diabolical'. These group of hut circles belonged to the Bronze Age prehistoric farmers. At this age, the climate was warm. They were not only do farming, but also made axe heads from bronze, a mixture of tin and copper. They also built burial places and stone circles where religious ceremonies are thought to have been carried out. These structures and monuments reflect different aspect of life during that time. There is about 24 hut circle found in the compound. The large enclosure wall, from the position of the site in the 'saddle' between the two tors and the limited visibility, was not built for defensive purpose. We can therefore assume that the wall was built to keep animals out [or in]. The situation of the pound was related to the stream, which could be indicated that the settlement was built by pastoral people, anxious to water their stock and protected from wild beasts. Some of the huts didn't have any signs of habitation and concluded that these were used for stores or to keep animals. Towards the end of Bronze age, the climate became colder and more rain. The crops couldnt grew well in the moor and the site was presumed abandoned.

hearth livier

It was originally not an ordinary farmhouse, but most certainly the 13th century manor house of Houndtor that was converted to longhouse.

Soon after the insertion of the fireplace, increased living space and privacy was provided by the insertion of a first floor. These events mark the transition between medieval and modern times ideas of comfort and privacy.

granaries first floor

section shelter shed

the stable ground floor

parlour
blocked doors blocked windows

cross entry

The shed provided shelter from the worst of the weather and a place in which cattle could be fed, thus reducing the waste, maintaining their quality during bad weather.
cross entry

The stable was spacious, airy and well lit. The stable was placed beneath a granary. The granary building type is raised above the ground. The wall, floor and roof materials of the granaries were tight fitting, clean and secure.

The oldest buildings of Houndtor appears to have been a settlement belonging to the Celtic people at the Middle Bronze Age about 1000 b.c. The site was abandoned when the weather deteriorated. As the climate improved, about 1000 years later, the site was occupied by the early Saxon age farmers. There houses were built from wood and turf, with wattles inside the walls, perhaps covered in mud or plaster. Eventually these turf houses were replaced by stone buildings, which is a distinctive medieval longhouse type which accommodate both human and cattle under the same roof using the same cross entry. The function of the inner room is not certain, but it may have been used mainly to keep corn, milk, cheese and other valuable stores from wandering animals. In later houses, it was used as a dairy.

inner room

plan,
fireplace shippon

late 17th century

drawn from Dartmoor National Park documents

Phase 5

porch

20 meter

The hall remained the center of all domestic activity until the addition of a wing.

slit ventilation storage bay barn first floor cattle ground floor stable ground floor used to be cart shed cow house ground floor

It is a classic and unusually complete half-hipped early medieval longhouse, originally a hall house open to the roof, with a later wing. It is thatched and rubble built and set well back into a bank, almost up to eaves level at the upper end and, although the roof has been raised, from the outside it still keeps its medieval line. It's one of the very few which still have no secondary door to the shippon an indisputable example of entrances shared by men and cattle. It was used in this way until after the last war.

section
Among the types of combination farm buildings, the bank barn is the most economical and practical in the hilly and arable areas for its compactness and very often, its rugged beauty.

lintels and jamb stones

entrance
The entrance all faced away from the north westerly wind. And the porch was served to protect the doorway from the weather and also to keep animals out. The walls, made of slabs set upright in the ground, with the spaces between them filled with smaller stones, were about 2 or 3 feet thick. A raised stone platform [called dias] was assumed for sitting, sleeping away from droughts and dampness. It is covered by stack of straws or animal skin to keep the body warm. They were growing cereals and storing them in the corn drying kilns which were built into a raised platforms set back into lynchets, a classic way of building a well-insulated kiln of any kind. Towards the end of the life of the settlements the right hand kiln of each pair of corn-driers was converted into an oven. The oven at hut holes was so similar to the bread ovens which survive in the present farmhouses that it is likely to have been used for baking bread and it's possible to be used for other purposes. The earliest surviving feature of Higher Uppacott is the wooden roof structure in the shippon closest to the cross passage. This is known as a raised cruck truss with two curved timber rising from the centre of the walls forming the principal rafters. Bank barns are built ranging from 17th century, common in 18th and 19th century, till the first few years of the 20th century.The barn, which is a building for the processing and temporary storage of the grain crop, is used for threshing process and winnowing. The processes were a monotonous, dusty, arduous. Therefore it required adequate space, light, height and controlled ventilation. Often the main barn doors were protected by a canopy or by a deep porch. The deep porch protected thoroughly the floor and allowed the last cart of the evening to be left under cover to be unloaded the following day. On the other hand, ventilation to the storage bays was only necessary to a limited extend. In stone barns tall slits or square or triangular holes provided ventilation. The invention of the threshing machine had, however, eliminated the need for a barn.

Bibliography : Hawkles, Jacguetta - Atlas of Ancient Archeology, London 1974. Chapman, Lesley - The ancient dwellings of Grimspound & Houndtor , UK 1996. Dartmoor National Park, London 1957. Sanders, Jenny [& Elizabeth Bawne] - Early Dartmoor Longhouses, 1998. Mercer, Eric - English Vernacular Houses, London 1975. Brunskill, R.W - Traditional Farm Buildings of Britain, Great Britain 1982.

Archeology and Ethnography of Dartmoor, Yenny Gunawan / P02057277, 19 November 2002.