 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 then rising again to form Shaugh Moor and Trowlesworthy
Warren on the southern 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 that 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 of the circle 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. |
 Brisworthy Circle, the north-western arc of stones. |
 View of the western arc of stones. |
 Looking east from Brisworthy Circle across the valley of Legis Lake towards Legis Tor. |
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