ON THE TRACK OF THE " OLD MEN." 
105 
blowing-house is thirty-three feet long, sixteen feet wide, and 
is surrounded with an outer enclosure, or dwarf rampart, which 
was evidently intended to prevent surface water from gaining 
access to the furnaces. 
The doorway, five feet six inches wide, is on the eastern side, 
with the jambs fairly perfect, but no lintel. It appears to have 
been about five feet high. Almost choking this up are two large 
stones, one containing three oval-shaped cavities, and the other 
two. These cavities are about seven inches wide, and vary from 
five to six inches deep. Opposite this entrance, and on the 
western side, is either a doorway or window, three feet wide 
with perfect jambs. This does not appear to be an entrance from 
the exterior, but leads — if a doorway — from the interior of the 
main building to an outside compartment of some depth, the 
bottom of which looks like the remnants of flues. 
At the south end the walls of roughly-placed stones, some 
squared, with no sign of mortar, are five to six feet high, and in 
the centre of the house is what appears to be one side of a furnace 
mouth, formed of a wedge-shaped stone. 
The most striking features of this ruin are two oak-trees ; one 
with a trunk circumference of five feet six inches, growing inside 
the house, near the entrance on the eastern side, and the other 
with three boles, not so large, growing inside the ruin on the 
western side. In the south-west angle is the flue exit from 
furnace. Both are large and flourishing trees for Dartmoor, and 
must indicate considerable age. 
Forty feet south of the blowing-house, higher up the hill, is the 
other ruin, eighteen feet six inches long by twelve feet wide. 
The doorway facing north has the jamb perfect on the western 
side, imperfect on the other, and was originally from three to four 
feet wide. The jamb has a groove about two feet long, three and 
a half inches wide, and about an inch deep. The footstone is in 
place at entrance. 
The fireplace recess, two feet deep and four feet wide, with a 
portion of the chimney back standing, is on the south side of the 
building. What appears to be the hearth-stone has been removed, 
and is now lying on the high ground close behind the chimney. 
The walls of this house are three to four feet wide, and a portion 
of the western gable, seven to eight feet high, is still standing. 
The wheel-pit runs the whole length of the eastern end of the 
