inscribed "The Druid Avenue Leading from Kes Tor over Dartmoor"
Shovel Down is the location of a mixture of prehistoric monument types including stone rows, standing stones, a concentric cairn circle as well as several other cairns and a settlement area with hut circles and an associated field system.
It is the stone rows that the visitor meets with first when walking uphill from Batworthy Corner. There appears to be four double rows and two singles with another destroyed row that form a staggered 'Y' shape running in a general north to south direction along a rise to the east of the Down, one runs north-south for about 180 metres (photograph at bottom of the page and marked as 1 on the plan left) with the stones about a metre apart and gradually increasing in height before ending at the south with a pair of large fallen pillars, one 2 metres long, the other about 3.5 metres in length. Just beyond are the overgrown remains of a small concentric stone circle or cairn consisting of four rings ranging from about 2.5 metres to 9 metres in diameter.
Another double stone row extends to the north-northwest (row 2 left) with three remaining stones of a stone circle to the west of its northern end. A third row to the centre of the site (image below and 3 left) starts just to the west of the concentric circle and heads south-southeast. Beyond this a fourth more damaged row heads south (4 left) ending with a large upright known as the Long Stone which stands over 3 metres tall - initials carved into one face point to its more modern use as a boundary stone. A little further to the south is the remaining leaning stone of the 'Three Boys' although what this monument was is unclear.
Assuming that the rows, circles and standing stones are contemporary with the settlement sites it is interesting that the two groups of monuments stand apart with settlement to the west, ceremonial sites to the east.
Mary Keightley (1854-1946) was the youngest daughter of Archibald Keightley (1795-1877), executor of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s estate. She was a good amateur artist. Archibald Keightley (1795-1877), who was a solicitor who was the executor for Sir Thomas Lawrence, who had died earlier in 1830. Mr Keightley was responsible for the sale of Sir Thomas's collections, some of which were not paid for! There is a very interesting story about Sir Thomas's collection of old master drawings which were part of the assets Mr Keightley hadto dispose of. Following his work as a solicitor, Mr Keightley a few years later became the Registrar for the Charterhouse School, where he remained for 39 years.
Mary Keightley was born in 1854, in Charterhouse, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom, her father, Archibald Keightley, was 58 and her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Yates, was 41. She lived in London, England for about 20 years and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, United Kingdom in 1891. She died on 20 April 1946, in Camberley, Surrey, England, United Kingdom, at the age of 93.