TORS OF DARTMOOR
a database of both lesser- & well-known rocks and outcrops
South Lodes Gully Set approximately 400 metres to the south east of the Warren House Inn, is a spectacular tin mining excavation that is known as South Lodes. Jeremy Butler (1991) explains "Islands of rock lie marooned along the length of this enormous gully. 500 metres long by up to 80 metres across at its widest point, excavated by the 'Old Men' probably in the sixteenth century".  Greeves and Stanbrook (2001) offer a little more information "Looking eastward from the Warren House Inn extensive gullies can be seen, running roughly east and west. These are all artificial and dug out by miners following tin lodes in the 16th and 17th centuries and much earlier too. The scale of early working is unparalleled anywhere else in Devon or Cornwall". They go on to describe the area as a "supreme tin working landscape".  Here, standing on the floor of the main workings of South Lodes the onlooker is dwarfed by the extent of the exposed granite. Grand and often contorted piles jut from the steep valley sides like silent sentinels of the industrial past. Not as claustrophobic as neighbouring Chaw Gully to the north east, South Lodes is more open and dramatic its rocks more eminent and craggier, but care must be taken around them as the sides are sheer and there are hidden holes and very uneven sections to negotiate nothing of which can be seen from the paths above. 
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