Merrivale - Stone Row Area

Stone Rows and Circles - Devon

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This area of the Merrivale site is dominated by two double stone rows. Although the rows are only about 1m wide and most of the stones making them up are small, both rows are over 150m long. The rows appear to run parallel to each other, but measurement reveals that they diverge towards the west by about 2 degrees.
The northern row is the shorter of the two and is about 180m long, but although it still has its eastern terminal "blocking" stone, there is no sign of the western terminal stones, so the row just peters out and it may have originally been longer.
The southern row has both sets of terminal stones intact, and its 264m length is therefore probably the original measurement. This row is unusual in that it has stone circle standing almost in the middle of its length. The circle is small, we measured a diameter of 3.7m with 6 stones standing, all less than 0.5m in height, another 3 - 4 lie fallen. At the centre of the circle are the remains of a small cairn or barrow. We could not discover if the cairn and circle were built with the row, or were the result of reuse of the site in later times.
About 14m south of the eastern section of the south row is a large cist, the massive capstone of which was originally 2m long, unfortunately in 1860 the stone was split to make a gatepost, so today two pieces remain, both showing the drill holes made by the mason for his splitting wedges.  The slab lined rectangular cist is now easily accessible due the missing section of capstone, and it is now popular with the local sheep as a convenient shelter from the moorland wind. 
About 40m west of the central stone circle in the south row another single row runs away to the SSW, this row is about 40m long and its few remaining stones are difficult to pick out, the most prominent standing where it passes the remains of a small cairn. A second, much larger cairn lies about 30m west of the small cairn and row.
As mentioned above, most of the stones that make up the rows are small, but we noticed that important areas such as the row termini were marked by much larger stones, we also noticed that larger stones were occasionally inserted along the length of the south row. Taking a closer look at these larger stones we noticed that in they seemed to mark positions in the row opposite some of the monuments external to the row. There is a very large stone on the south side of the row opposite the eastern terminus of the northern row, another very large stone stands on the south side of the row opposite the site of the large cist, at the western end, two smaller stones mark the position of the single stone row and cairn, and another large stone, again on the southern side of the row, marks the larger cairn. We do not think that these large stone placements could be coincidence, and if they were part of the original row, then the monuments that they mark must be the same age, or older.

*Centre of the stone circle in the southern row.