Avalon Planning & Heritage is supporting the Central Dartmoor Landscape Recovery (CDLR) project in delivering ambitious landscape-scale nature recovery initiatives. As part of Defra’s Landscape Recovery scheme, the project aims to restore ecological resilience across central Dartmoor while ensuring that the area’s remarkable historic environment is protected, understood, and integrated into future land management.
Led by the Central Dartmoor Farm Cluster CIC and delivered in partnership with the Duchy of Cornwall, the project brings together farmers, landowners, conservationists, and local communities. Covering 22,000 hectares across around 40 upland farms, Newtakes and six Commons, the initiative seeks to create a thriving, well-connected natural landscape that supports both biodiversity and sustainable upland farming. The area is equally renowned for its rich cultural heritage—ranging from prehistoric settlements to medieval tinworking—making early assessment of heritage sensitivities an essential part of project planning.
Why Dartmoor’s Historic Environment Matters
Dartmoor is the largest area of open moorland in southern Britain and one of the most complete upland relict landscapes in the country. Its exceptional state of preservation means that archaeological features remain visible and legible within the landscape, offering a rare window into thousands of years of human activity.
Across its expanses, visitors can encounter:
- Prehistoric settlement remains, including hut circles and extensive field systems
- Ceremonial and funerary monuments, such as cairns and stone rows
- Medieval agricultural features, including strip fields and longhouses
- Post-medieval and later industrial sites, linked to tinworking and other rural industries
The coherence of these layers—often preserved in close physical relationship—provides crucial evidence for understanding social, environmental, and economic change through time. This makes Dartmoor not only an ecological asset but a cultural one, where both natural and historic environments must be considered holistically.
Aims of the Heritage Assessment
To ensure that nature recovery does not inadvertently harm the historic environment, Avalon Planning & Heritage has prepared detailed Heritage Impact Assessments (HIA). There key aims are:
- To assess the significance of known archaeological features using Historic England’s Conservation Principles.
- To identify constraints and opportunities for heritage within the project area, informed by the CDLR team’s hierarchy of constraints.
- To evaluate how proposed landscape recovery works interact with heritage features, assessing risks, potential impacts, and mitigation strategies.
This approach ensures that heritage considerations are embedded from the outset rather than treated as an afterthought.
Understanding Heritage Significance
The assessment follows national best practice, including Historic England guidance and the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Each asset is then categorised as being of national, regional, local, or negligible significance. This helps determine the extent to which proposed interventions may affect heritage interest and how harm can be avoided or minimised.
A Risk-Based, Landscape-Scale Approach
Because Dartmoor’s archaeological resource is so extensive, a clear and practical method was needed to determine where landscape recovery activities can occur safely. The project used a traffic-light (RAG) system to indicate levels of archaeological constraint:
- Major (Red): highly sensitive areas, often containing Scheduled Monuments, where intervention will be difficult or require significant mitigation.
- Moderate (Amber): areas where works may proceed with adaptations and archaeological involvement such as surveys or watching briefs.
- Slight (Light Green): low-level restrictions requiring minor monitoring or careful working practices.
- Negligible (Pale Green): minimal restrictions, although awareness of features remains essential.
This system enables stakeholders—including farmers, landowners, and conservation practitioners—to make informed decisions that align ecological objectives with heritage protection.
What the Assessments Reveal About the Research Areas
Challacombe Farm
Challacombe lies within a landscape of exceptionally high archaeological sensitivity, with abundant Scheduled Monuments and coherent evidence of prehistoric settlement, medieval farming, and later industry. The assessment confirms that most landscape recovery activities—such as grazing, vegetation control, and targeted planting—can
be delivered without harm when carefully sited. However, areas intersecting tinworking or medieval landscapes will require bespoke mitigation.
Cherrybrook Newtake
This area contains nationally important Scheduled Monuments alongside regional and local assets. The proposed works (tree planting, woodland pasture, mire restoration) offer ecological value but require careful design:
- Exclusion zones around Scheduled Monuments
- Buffering and maintaining open grassland
- Sensitive routing of any hydrological interventions
Gidleigh Common
Gidleigh Common represents one of the richest archaeological landscapes in central Dartmoor, featuring hut circles, coaxial field systems, ceremonial monuments, and industrial remains. Many proposed interventions—particularly vegetation control, fire management, and peatland restoration—are likely to produce net benefits by improving visibility and stabilising conditions.
Tree planting and hydrological restoration, however, require site-specific controls to avoid impacts on buried or earthwork features.
A Positive Vision for Dartmoor’s Future
Across the project area, the assessments demonstrate that nature recovery and heritage conservation can work in harmony. With appropriate management, many ecological interventions can enhance rather than compromise historic features.
This integrated approach offers multiple wider benefits:
- Improved understanding of Dartmoor’s archaeology through surveys, monitoring, and community involvement
- Long-term resilience against erosion, wildfire, and vegetation damage
- Opportunities for public engagement, education, and stewardship
- A strengthened sense of place, preserving Dartmoor’s unique character for future generations
Conclusion
The Central Dartmoor Landscape Recovery project represents a rare opportunity to restore ecological health at a transformative scale while safeguarding one of Britain’s most treasured historic landscapes. By embedding heritage considerations from the outset, the project ensures that Dartmoor’s cultural legacy—spanning millennia of human activity—remains intact and meaningful.
The Heritage Impact Assessments confirm that with thoughtful planning, risk-based flexibility, and continued collaboration between farmers, archaeologists, conservationists, and local communities, Dartmoor’s natural and historic environments can flourish together. This holistic, forward-looking approach will help secure a resilient, vibrant landscape that supports biodiversity, sustains farming, and protects the stories embedded in Dartmoor’s ancient terrain.