The Crockern Tor Judge's Chair

The table below lists the over 900 records of Dartmoor cairns listed in Jeremy Butler's classic 5-volume Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities published in the 1990s. The listings should match those in the back of the first four volumes. Volume 5 contains sites not covered in the first four volumes but does not have these indexed. For example Mardon Down is not on the maps of the first four volumes. Sites missed in the earlier volumes due to oversight or because they were unknown at the time of publishing were covered in Volume 5. Some of these have been incorporated into the listing if it seemed appropriate to do so.

Work in Progress ... Sept 2017

This page is a work in progress. For an explanation see the comments on the inter-related page of cairns listed by Grinsell. Refining and coding the output of so many records is quite a major undertaking and this is the first version of this listing. Rows given a light blue background indicate sites that no longer exist, those with a light salmon background are duplicate records. There maybe cairns mentioned in Volume 5 not yet incorporated into this listing - checking this is an outstanding task. The "-1" entries in the HER colum indicate that the HER has been searched and no matching record found rather than no search having been done. Curiously, there are over 100 such records which suggest that 100 records listed by Butler are not in the HER.

Please contact the author if any errors are seen.

Bibliography & references

Davies, E.W.L., Dartmoor days; or, Scenes in the forest: a poem (1863) pp.145-6
Turner, J.R., Ring Cairns, stone circles and related monuments on Dartmoor, D.A.S.P. No. 48 pp. 27-86 (1990)
King, R.J., The Forest of Dartmoor and its Borders, (1856)
Pengelly, William, Prince's "Worthies of Devon" and the "Dictionary of National Biography" Part 3, T.D.A. Vol. 19 pp.217-348 (1885) pp.217-348
Polwhele, Richard, Historical views of devonshire, vol.1, (1793) pp.
Rowe, Samuel, A Perambulation of Dartmoor (1st Edition), (1848) pp.169-171
Westcote, Thomas, A view of Devonshire in 1830, (1845) pp.
Worth, R.N, The Ancient Stannary of Ashburton, T.D.A. Vol. 8 (1876) pp.311-322
Worth, R.N., A History of Devonshire, (1895) pp.330-32

Extract from Permabulation of Dartmoor by Samuel Rowe 2nd Edition 1848

CROCKERN TOR - STANNARY COURTS

[…] we shall soon arrive at Prince Town, where, or at Two Bridges, distant scarcely two miles, we shall find accommodation for the night, and a central position, from which a great number of objects may be conveniently be visited.

Foremost amongst these is Crockern Tor, which we shall reach by proceeding from Two Bridges, along the Moreton turnpike-road, from which town it is distant about eleven miles. This tor has long been celebrated no one of the wonders of the Forest, although there are numerous other objects, of far greater interest in reality, which have been passed without notice by those who have commemorated the antient Parliament Rock. Yet, if Polwhele's conjecture deserves any credit, faint as are the existing vestiges of by-gone ages which will repay the antiquary's investigations at Crockern Tor, the charm of association will not be wanting to impart interest to the scene. Our provincial historian having fixed the seat of judicature for his cantred of Durius, at Grimspound, assigns Crockern Tor as the site of the supreme court of the cantred of Tamara. To these ancient courts of justice, if such these were, Polwhele traces the origin of the stannary parliaments of Devon and Cornwall, which he affirms "were similar in every point of resemblance to the old British courts." He observes that "Crockern Tor, from its situation in the middle of Dartmoor Forest, is undoubtedly a very strange place for holding meetings of any kind. Exposed as it is to the severities of the weather, and distant as it always has been, within our own times and the memory of man, from every human habitation, we might well be surprised, that it should have been chosen for the spot on which our laws were to be framed, unless some peculiar sanctity had been attached to it, in consequence of its appropriation to legal or judicial purposes, from the earliest antiquity. Besides, there is no other instance, that I recollect, within our own times, of such a court, in so exposed and so remote a place. On this tor, not long since, was the warden's or president's chair, seats for the jurors, a high corner stone for the crier of the court, and a table, all rudely hewn out of the rough moorstone of the tor, together with a cavern which, for the convenience of our modern courts, was used, in these latter ages, as a repository for wine. Notwithstanding this provision, indeed, Crockern Tor was too cold and dreary a place for our legislators of the last generations; who, after opening their commission and swearing the jurors on this spot, merely to keep up the old formalities, usually adjourned the court to one of the stannary towns."

That Crockern Tor was long the place, where the hardy stannators of the moorlands held their conventions, must be received as an established historical fact, whatever may be thought of our author's hypothesis of the original choice of the spot for judicial purposes. Our older topographers notice the circumstance. Prince, who wrote in the year 1697, records that Crockern Tor, in the Forest of Dartmoor, was the place "where the parliament is wont to be held for stannary causes; unto which the four principal stannary towns, Tavistock, Plimton, Ashburton, and Chagford, send each twenty-four burgesses, who are summoned thither, when the Lord Warden of the Stannaries sees occasion, where they enact statutes, laws, and ordinances, which, ratified by the Lord Warden aforesaid, are in full force in all matters, between tinner and tinner, life and limb excepted. This memorable place is only a great rock of moorstone, out of which a table and seats are hewn, open to all the weather, storms, and tempests, having neither house nor refuge near it, by divers miles. The borough of Tavistock is said to be the nearest, and yet that is distant ten miles off." * It would, perhaps, be incorrect to say that no traces whatever of this celebrated hypaethral court can now be detected; but on careful examination they will be found to be lamentably slight, if not decidedly equivocal. The common report, that the most remarkable objects, such as the table and seats, were removed and destroyed by the workmen of Sir Francis Buller, then the owner of the neighbouring estate of Prince Hall, has been condemned by the annotators on Carrington's Dartmoor, as a calumny, although the Rev. E. Bray affirms ** that the allegation is so far confirmed by the fact of his finding at Dennabridge, (the place whither the stannary tables is reported to have been carried,) a tabular moorstone, eight feet long by nearly six wide, which the farmer at Dennabridge stated, from his own knowledge, to have been there fifty years; and that he had heard it was brought from Crockern Tor about eighty years ago. In the first volume of Mrs. Bray's Letters, is an amusing account of Mr. Bray's pursuit of the lost relic in 1831, and of its alleged discovery at Dennabridge Farm, near the well-known drift-pound of that name on the banks of the West Dart. In 1835 I obtained some information from a moorland patriarch, near the spot, who stated that he had lived on the moor sixty years, and bad been in the service of Judge Buller. He remembered, perfectly well, when there was a chair, or stone seat, at Crockern Tor, with four or five steps to go up to it, and that overhead, there was a large flat thinnish stone. These were all by degrees removed for building; the last of them having been taken away, as well as he could remember, about twenty years before that time. With these recollections in our mind, let us descend from Crockern Tor, and strike across the common over Cherrybrook, to Dennabridge Pound, on the Ashburton road. Immediately within the entrance is a stone seat, which, if my aged informant's account of the judge's stannary chair be accurate, would present an appearance greatly similar to that venerable relic before it was demolished. Although others may be unable to discover in Dennabridge, those unequivocal evidences of aboriginal antiquity, which were so satisfactory to Mr. Bray, the conclusions to which a practised observer was led, on personal examination, will not fail to be interesting. "Had I any doubt before, that the pound was erected on the base of an antient British, or rather Celtic, circle, I could not entertain it now, for I have not the slightest doubt of the high antiquity of this massy chair." After speaking of the Reeve, (the probable despoiler of Crockern Tor,) he adds, "but I am fully convinced that it was originally designed for a much greater personage; no less, perhaps, than an Archdruid, or President, of some court of judicature.***" Dennabridge Pound occupies a large area, inclosed by a rough moonstone wall. It is now used for the forest drifts, and is capable of containing vast numbers of cattle.

* Chagford and Ashburton are about the same distance.

** Mr. Bray, however, exculpates Judge Buller, and thinks the spoliation may berg attributed to a former Reeve of the Forest.

*** Banks of Tamar and Tavy, vol. I., p.134 From Mr. Bray’s Journal, published in this work in 1833, it appears that his recorded observations extend as far back as 1802.

Page last updated 19/03/20