Photo © Leslie Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Challacombe
Challacombe is a farm and a few buildings in a shallow valley between Postbridge and Widecombe, with Challacombe Down on one side and Hamel Down on the other. It is a remote spot even by Dartmoor standards, and it is best known not for the settlement but for what is written into the ground around it.
On the slope beside the farm lie some of the clearest medieval strip lynchets in the south west, the long terraces of a field system worked when this valley supported a community, abandoned centuries ago and preserved because nothing has ploughed them since. Close by are the tin workings of the Vitifer and Birch Tor mines, the warren where rabbits were farmed commercially, and, over the shoulder of Hamel Down, Grimspound: the Bronze Age enclosure whose wall and hut circles are the most visited prehistoric site on Dartmoor. Few square miles anywhere hold so many layers of the moor's history.
Challacombe on the map
In Challacombe
Beehive Hut (Remains)
Challacombe, Chagford
Stone foundations of an Iron Age or Bronze Age dwelling, weathered into the Dartmoor granite landscape.
Buddles
Challacombe, Chagford
Atmospheric remains of a tin mine on open moorland, where industrial heritage merges with wild Dartmoor landscape.
Medieval Village of Challacombe
Challacombe, Chagford
Haunting stone foundations scattered across windswept moorland, where a medieval farming community once sheltered from Dartmoor's unforgiving climate.
Milestone, SX 678 813
Challacombe, Chagford
A weathered roadside milestone marking distance on the high moor, typical of routes crossing Dartmoor from the 18th or 19th century.
Pumping Mount (Ruins)
Challacombe, Chagford
Crumbling stone ruins of a Victorian pumping station deep on the open moor, a relic of Dartmoor's industrial past.
Ruined buildings (Roses Cottage)
Challacombe, Chagford
Roses Cottage's skeletal remains stand weathered on open moorland, a poignant reminder of Dartmoor's lost settlements.
