Merrivale
| Merrivale | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 Merrivale hamlet and quarry | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SX547752 |
| Location: | 50°33’30"N, 4°3’3"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Yelverton |
| Postcode: | PL20 |
| Dialling code: | 01822 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | West Devon |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Torridge and West Devon |
Merrivale (formerly also Merivale) is a place in Devon, in western Dartmoor, east of Tavistock. Once Merrivale had its own school for the moorland children and a busy quarry. Only a house or two and farm survive today form the village it once was.
Merrivale is best known for the nearby series of Bronze Age megalithic monuments to the south, and for the lowering granite quarry whose granite blocks lie half-tumbled above the road.
Merrivale hamlet
The hamlet is at the crossing of the River Walkham on the B3357 (formerly the main Ashburton to Tavistock road), midway between the towns of Princetown and Tavistock. There is an older disused bridge to the north of the modern road.
The hamlet is dominated by the spoil tip from the former Merrivale granite quarry (originally known as Tor Quarries),[1] which closed in 1997. The few buildings include houses built originally for quarry workers and the Dartmoor Inn, which sells Merrivale Ale. There was once also a Wesleyan chapel.
Archaeology
The main area of archaeological interest is to the south-east of the hamlet at SX556746. Although it has been diminished over time, the site includes a 12.5 feet standing stone, a stone circle and a stone row.
Also visible are two stone avenues running parallel to each other on either side of a stream. The southern avenue is 864.5 feet long and has the remains of a barrow in the middle. The northern avenue is slightly shorter. Both avenues are only about 1 metre wide down the centre. The southernmost double row has a kistvaen set within the stone row. The eastern end of the rows is passed by a section of the Great Western Reave, running roughly NW-SE.[2]
To the south of the avenues is a large kistvaen which contained a flint scraper, a number of flint flakes and a whetstone for polishing metal items. The 'lid' of the cist was broken in two by a farmer at some time in the past, who made a gatepost out of it.
On the hillside are found several hut circles of stone, suggesting that a sizable prehistoric village trove on these windswept slopes.
Numerous tors are visible from the site, including King's Tor and Staple Tor.
The stone row was formerly known in the area as the Potato Market or Plague Market, supposedly since provisions for Tavistock were left here during an outbreak of plague. Crossing remarked on how insignificant the stones appear, given the size of some of the raw materials available.[1]
More recent archaeology includes the remains of tin mining and smelting along the River Walkham and its side streams.
Geology and geomorphology
Merrivale straddles the western edge of the Dartmoor granite outcrop. The hamlet, quarry and Staple Tors to the north are on the granite, while Cox Tor immediately to the west is on the metamorphic aureole, with altered Carboniferous sedimentary rocks of the Culm Measures lower down and calc-silicate hornfels and intrusive dolerite at the summit.[3] The Merrivale Granite is coarse grained, porphyritic, with crystals that are dark grey, white/cream and orange in colour.[4]
The Merrivale Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) to the north of the hamlet was the 4000th SSSI declared in England, in 1997. Besides the quarry it includes Cox Tor, Roos Tor and Staple Tors. It has a range of periglacial landscape features, including blockfields, boulder runs and boulder stripes, formed under tundra conditions (arctic to sub-arctic climate) during the ]Pleistocene. It is important in understanding how the landscape of the West Country was formed, and how the granite tors of Devon and Cornwall were formed.[5]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Merrivale) |
- PAL (Premier Archaeological Landscape) description by the Dartmoor National Park Authority
- Illustrations and some details in the Megalithic Portal
- Dartmoor National Park Authority - Guide to Merrivale SSSI
- Merrivale Prehistoric Settlement - English Heritage
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Crossing, William (1912), Guide to Dartmoor, Plymouth: Western Morning News Co Ltd, reprinted with introduction by Brian Le Messurier (rev 1981), Newton Abbot: David & Charles, ISBN 0-7153-4034-4)
- ↑ Fleming, Andrew (1988). The Dartmoor Reaves. Investigating Prehistoric Land Divisions. London: Batsford. p. 42. ISBN 0-7134-5666-3.
- ↑ British Geological Survey (1995), Dartmoor Forest. England and Wales Sheet 338. Solid & Drift Geology, 1:50,000 Series geological map, Keyworth, Nottingham: British Geological Survey, ISBN 0-7518-3008-9
- ↑ "Merrivale Granite". Stone in Archaeology Database. University of Southampton Archaeology Dept. http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/stones_ahrb_2005/cfm/Public/details/RockDetails.cfm?RockCode=MERRIV. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
- ↑ "Health Check On SSSIs". Press releases. English Nature. 1997-09-23. http://www.english-nature.org.uk/news/story.asp?ID=171. Retrieved 2008-03-21.