Dartmoor Longhouses: Reading the Farmsteads of Moorland Devon

On the edges of Dartmoor, where the walled fields give way to open moor, stand long, low farmhouses of grey granite, set down the slope of the hill with their backs to the weather. Many are Dartmoor longhouses: homes in which a farming family and its cattle once lived under a single roof, sharing a front door. According to the Dartmoor National Park Authority and Historic England, more than 120 survive on the moor, the highest survival of longhouses in northern Europe outside Brittany. Learning to read one tells you a great deal about how people lived and farmed on the moor over many centuries. The tour crosses Dartmoor on the fifth day of our small group tour of England’s villages, and this article explains what to look for.

What makes a longhouse a longhouse?

A longhouse is a single long building that housed both people and livestock, with a shared entrance. The Dartmoor farmsteads character statement, prepared by Historic England and the National Park Authority, describes how these houses lie down the slope of the land, with the animal end, called the shippon, at the lower end, and often a shared entrance for humans and animals. The Landmark Trust, which looks after one of the finest examples, puts it simply: men and animals live under one roof, and in its model form share the same entrance.

The plan is remarkably consistent. Historic England’s listing for Higher Uppacott, near Poundsgate, describes a three-room and through-passage plan: the shippon on one side of a passage running across the house, and the hall and an inner room on the other. The passage, with doors at both ends, was the way in for everyone. Turn one way and you entered the family’s living space; turn the other and you were among the cattle.

People, animals and the divided interior

The shippon tells you how the cattle were kept. At Higher Uppacott, Historic England records a well-made central drain lined with large granite blocks, running out through the base of the end wall. Research on the house for the National Park Authority’s Moor than meets the eye project describes cattle standing in two rows facing the side walls, with feeding racks and troughs along the walls and kerbs holding the tethering posts. The shippon takes up about half the building, a reminder of how much the household’s wealth depended on its animals.

Building down the slope was a practical choice. With the cattle at the lower end, drainage ran away from the living rooms rather than towards them. At the medieval settlement of Hound Tor, English Heritage notes, the dung was shovelled out through a small opening in the wall.

The living end was originally a single open space for most of its height. Early longhouses had no chimney; a fire burned on a central hearth, and the smoke found its way out through the thatch. At Higher Uppacott, Historic England’s listing records that the roof trusses, purlins, ridge and even the underside of the thatch are smoke-blackened, an extraordinary survival that the National Park Authority calls rare. Tree-ring dating published by Historic England in 2024 dates the timber of the shippon’s original roof truss to between the mid-fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

How old are Dartmoor’s longhouses?

The form goes back at least to the thirteenth century, and the standing houses mostly date from the fourteenth to the seventeenth. The character statement records archaeological evidence for longhouses on Dartmoor from the thirteenth century. Most of the houses still standing were altered many times. The National Park Authority’s guidance describes chimneys, upper floors and stairs being inserted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and stone porches, some of two storeys, added from the seventeenth century onwards.

The biggest change was the gradual removal of the cattle. Over time most shippons were rebuilt or absorbed into the house, so that a longhouse became simply a long farmhouse. Only a small number of shippons survive intact, and the character statement calls them exceptionally rare in a national context. At Lower West Coombe, for example, Historic England notes that part of the shippon was probably converted into a parlour in the eighteenth century.

Building materials and exposed conditions

Dartmoor longhouses are built of the moor itself. The character statement explains that granite moorstone, the weathered boulders lying on the surface, was the building material long before granite quarrying began in the early nineteenth century. The National Park’s design guide notes that large blocks collected from the moor were often built straight into the walls, which gives old Dartmoor buildings their rounded, softened look.

Roofs were originally thatched, though many were later covered with slate. Windows were small and set deep in the walls as protection against the weather. Houses were built low and long, set into the hillslope, and the design guide singles out the Dartmoor porch as a characteristic feature. At Lettaford, the Landmark Trust notes, the farmhouses all stand on the east-facing slope, away from the prevailing wind. Every choice, from the siting to the size of the windows, reflects a climate that could be harsh for much of the year.

Keeping these buildings in good order still depends on traditional materials. When the National Park Authority restored Higher Uppacott, with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the roof was rethatched in combed wheat reed and the walls repaired with lime mortar rather than cement, so that the old granite walls could continue to breathe. Slate, which replaced thatch on many longhouses, has its own history: Devon’s slate production ended in the 1920s, so many slate roofs on the moor are themselves now historic. Reading a longhouse means reading these layers of repair as well as the original plan.

Farmstead setting and the moor

A longhouse was the centre of a farmstead, and the farmstead belonged to a landscape. The design guide describes moorland-fringe hamlets of two, three or four farms grouped together, and Lettaford, first recorded in 1248, is a good example: three farmhouses around a small green. Around the house stood barns, linhays, open-fronted two-storey cattle shelters with a hay loft above, and a mowhay, the local word for a rickyard. Ash houses, small stone buildings for storing ash from the hearth, are, according to the character statement, unknown beyond Devon and concentrated on Dartmoor.

The character statement also notes that barns earlier than the eighteenth century are rare on Dartmoor, and that most farmyards are laid out around a courtyard, with others more loosely dispersed. So where a longhouse survives, it is likely to be older than most of the farm buildings around it, which were added as farming changed.

Beyond the farmstead lay the fields: in-fields near the house cropped for corn, rye and hay, and out-fields used mostly for grazing. Beyond those lay the open moor, where farmers grazed their animals under common rights. That relationship between the walled farm and the unfenced common shaped everything about the longhouse economy, and it is the subject of our article on Dartmoor’s commons and grazing rights. The farms of Dartmoor’s high valleys, the ancient tenements, are part of that story too.

Romantic ruins and working houses

It is easy to romanticise abandoned stone buildings on the moor, and Dartmoor has some famous ones. At Hound Tor, in the care of English Heritage, the low granite walls of a medieval hamlet lie below a dramatic tor. English Heritage describes eleven stone buildings, probably three farms, including longhouses with central drains and barns with corn-drying ovens. The settlement was farmed from around 1200 and largely abandoned in the first half of the fourteenth century, after a cooling climate, harvest failures and cattle disease, followed by the Black Death in 1348.

Hound Tor shows the longhouse plan at its earliest, but a ruin can mislead. The houses that matter most for understanding Dartmoor are the ones that kept working, adapted generation after generation, gaining chimneys, floors and porches, and eventually losing their cattle. Sanders at Lettaford, built around 1500 and now cared for by the Landmark Trust, has a shippon Historic England describes as preserved virtually in its original state. Higher Uppacott, owned by the National Park Authority, keeps its shippon unaltered. These are living buildings with long histories, not picturesque ruins.

Can you visit a Dartmoor longhouse?

Not on the tour itself, but some are accessible to independent travellers. Higher Uppacott is opened by the National Park Authority for guided visits from time to time rather than on regular hours, and Sanders can be rented as a holiday let from the Landmark Trust. The ruins at Hound Tor are in English Heritage’s care. On the tour, Dartmoor is seen from the coach as the group crosses from Lacock to Fowey, and the farms you pass on the moorland fringe are the best place to spot the long, low granite shape of a longhouse.

Dartmoor and the wider Devon longhouse

The longhouse was not unique to Dartmoor. It was once found across the uplands of Devon and beyond, and our article on the Devon longhouse looks at the building type across the county and how its use changed. What makes Dartmoor exceptional is how many survive and how clearly they show the relationship between house, farm and moor. For a broader introduction to the moor’s history and character, see our guide to Dartmoor.

Once you know the shape, you start to see it everywhere on the moor’s edge: a long granite range set down the slope, a porch over the central doorway, a lower end with smaller openings. Each one is a record of a farming family’s life alongside its animals. Our guide to the England’s villages itinerary shows where Dartmoor fits in the journey, and the England’s villages small group tour is a good way to see this landscape with someone who can help you read it.