Grimspound

About three kilometres northeast of Widecombe, Grimspound is one of the best-preserved Bronze Age settlements in Britain. A massive pound wall, roughly 3 metres wide at the base, encloses an area of about 4 acres on a hillside of the moor. Inside the enclosure, the foundations of 24 hut circles remain visible — round stone settings where people lived around 3,500 years ago.

The walk from the road is short and the site is completely open — no entrance fee, no management, just stone on an open hillside with views across the moor in every direction. Grimspound was most likely a pastoral farming settlement, using the high moor for summer grazing. Arthur Conan Doyle used the area as the setting for the neolithic man's camp in The Hound of the Baskervilles.

things to do sight
A story
Grimspound was excavated by the Dartmoor Exploration Committee in 1894, and the stone wall was partly rebuilt during the work — making it one of the more "complete" Bronze Age sites in Britain. It gets its name from "Grim," an old English name for Woden (Odin), which was routinely applied to ancient earthworks whose origin was mysterious to medieval inhabitants.