Rippon Tor Rifle Range

A place on Dartmoor I have been aware of for some time but have not visited before. I came here on a recce for next Tuesdays walk.

A most unusual utilitarian construction and certainly built to last. Unusual in that is built of red bricks - when almost everything else on Dartmoor is built from granite. It was built in 1942 as part of troop training on Dartmoor during the Second World War. It was built to form a huge bank (see extras) behind the targets to catch the bullets which missed the target. Last used in the 1960's and as you can see from the extras part of the mechanism for raising the targets is still there.