TORS OF DARTMOOR
a database of both lesser- & well-known rocks and outcrops
Lower Top TorBovey Rock
 This scruffy little pile of jumbled blocks and boulders lies way down on the lower north west slopes of Top Tor to the south of the B3357 as it starts its descent to Widecombe in the Moor. It seems that Hemery (1983) is the first to describes the rocks; "Above Bovey Rock and significant by position rather than size is Top Tor (approx 1,450 feet) known locally as 'Tapter'. The lower side of the north west pile is utterly decayed, its residue like debris in a quarry tip."  Ken Ringwood (2013) correctly describes this section as a "small granite tor" having "two main outcrops and extremely large blocks but very little clitter" but he confuses the site here with Bovey Rock, which as the name implies is a single rounded rock, shapelier, nearer the road (B3387) and much further down the hill towards Widecombe at SX 7299 7667. It is possible that the author has been influenced by a misleading grid reference for Bovey Rock of SX 7338 7668 that appears in Mike Brown's Gazetteer of Dartmoor Names from 1995 that actually places it some way to the north and west of the site he describes.  The first use of the name Lower Top Tor appears in an article by Tim Jenkinson (2019) on Bovey Rock who in an attempt to differentiate between the two locations writes "More sizeable chunks of granite are strewn on the slopes below the Rock and uphill we see on the horizon what I now consider to be the mistaken rocks of what could be dubbed Lower Top Tor some 300 metres or so away to the south east." This comment is supported by a photograph that shows the relationship. 
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