TORS OF DARTMOOR
a database of both lesser- & well-known rocks and outcrops
Little Buttern Incorporated into the corner of the Buttern newtake wall on the north-eastern slopes of Buttern Hill a few metres from a western gate, this is a small ruined granite outcrop about one and a half metres high. It appears to have been utilised long before the relatively new boundary as it also straddles a prehistoric reave that runs north-west to south-east down into the enclosure terminating at another reave just above one of four surviving prehistoric huts.  Jeremy Butler, in Dartmoor Atlas of Antiquities Volume 2, gives some insight to the remains here; "The heart of the settlement seems to have lain on the north-east side of Buttern Hill in the area now occupied by the strangely shaped newtake. Its peculiar plan was dictated by the underlying reave patterns which radiate out in various directions as they re-emerge on the moorland side. Some of the walls within the newtake have been added to here and there but otherwise little altered since they were erected in prehistoric times."  The tor itself is best viewed from the enclosed eastern side within a gap between the wall and a barbed fence. It can be scaled easily to get close to a fine rock basin formed upon what could be perceived to be a separate flat slab, but is, in all likelihood, just a product of weathering. 
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