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Summary

Line of a possible droveway or transhumance route from Cockington up onto Dartmoor.

Location

Protected Status

• SHINE: Earthwork remains of a Bronze Age parallel reave system on Buckland Common and Blackslade Down, including prehistoric hut circle settlements and cairns, medieval and later remains
• SHINE: Remains of a Bronze Age reave system fossilised in the fields west of Ruddycleave; part of a wider system that preserves potential links to nearby prehistoric reave systems

Other References/Statuses

• SHINE Candidate (Yes)

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• DROVE ROAD (Unknown date)

Full description

Fox, H., 2012, Dartmoor's Alluring Uplands: Transhumance and Pastoral Management in the Middle Ages, 194-209 (Monograph). SDV351360.

Fox plots a possible droveway from Cockington up onto Dartmoor via Denbury and Waye. His route crosses the Totnes Road at Causeway Cross. He then shows two possible routes around Denbury hillfort, the northern route via Denbury Green, a possible stopover and watering point. He suggests that the final leg of the droveway crossed the East Webbern at the appropriately named Cockingford.
He comments on the directness of such droveways, which would have been used for driving cattle to summer pastures on the moor, although he does note some potential deviations, and also on the number of field names ending 'way' or' aways' which reference the droveway.
Note that Fox's map does not show the line of the droveway for the first few miles from Cockington. As he says of other possible droveways 'these early miles in the upward journey to Dartmoor are not easy to reconstruct'.

Ordnance Survey, 2018, MasterMap 2018 (Cartographic). SDV360652.

Modern lanes may follow the route of an ancient transhumance route.

Jones, S., 2018-2019, Alston Lane Droveway (Un-published). SDV362933.

Jones' research suggests that the route is not simply a droveway but a transhumance route running from Cockington in Torbay to Cockingford on Dartmoor. Such routeways were used for driving sheep and cattle from the lowland up to higher summer grazing. Jones draws attention to the general directness of the route and also to the fact that it survives complete. She agrees with Fox in that the 'early miles of the upward journey to Dartmoor are not easy to reconstruct' and suggests deviations around Cockington and Shiphay, which were at one time part of Torre Abbey's lands.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments: none recorded

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events

• EDV7621 - Survey of the Ruddycleave Streamworks

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