 Looking south over Brisworthy Circle towards Shaugh Moor in the distance. |
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Brisworthy
stone
circle stands at the far southern end of the unenclosed part of
Ringmoor Down with farmland and fieldwalls just beyond - as can be seen
from the line of fencing in the photograph above. Here the land slopes
gently down to the southeast towards a valley where a small stream feeds
into the River Plym, the land rising again to form Shaugh Moor and Trowlesworthy
Warren on the south side of the river. It is an idyllic and quiet spot
for this circle but what can be seen today is very much an early 20th
century restoration, before 1909 there were reported to be only three
or four stones standing with nearly twenty others fallen. The re-erecting
of the stones took place in this year by a Rev. Breton and Mr. Richard
Worth with opinion being that the placing of the stones was fairly accurate.
What we see today then is an oval of twenty four standing stones with
heights ranging from less than half a metre to nearly a metre and a
half tall, the diameter of the flattened ring varying between 24 and
27 metres. There appears to be several stones missing from the southern
arc and it could well be that these were pulled down or removed long
before the restoration to be used as building material for a fieldwall,
Worth suggested that the original number of stones could have been as
high as forty two although this estimate seems too high to me. He also
reported some signs of charcoal found in a trench they excavated inside
the circle and author Aubrey Burl points out that similar deposits were
also found within a couple of other Dartmoor circles at Fernworthy
and the Grey Wethers.
Just over 300 metres to the west-northwest of Brisworthy is the small cairn circle that marks the southern end of the Ringmoor stone row and although all three monuments are thought to date from the Bronze Age it is hard to say if Brisworthy is contemporary with the other two sites or indeed if it was ceremonially linked to them in some way. |
  Various views of Brisworthy Circle |
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