Yelverton Rock (also known as The Rock) is a

tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

-like

igneous Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or ...

rock outcrop immediately south-west of Yelverton,

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

. It is located at the southern end of the former

RAF Harrowbeer Royal Air Force Harrowbeer or more simply RAF Harrowbeer is a former Royal Air Force station situated next to Yelverton in the parish of Buckland Monachorum, Devon, England Location RAF Harrowbeer was located approximately NNE of the city of ...

airfield on

Roborough Down Roborough is a village in the South Hams of Devon, England. Former home of Plymouth City Airport (and formerly to RAF Roborough), Roborough lies just outside the northern boundary of the city of Plymouth on the main road to Tavistock, and is a p ...

, next to the border with the

A386 A86 is an assembler for MS-DOS which generates code for the Intel x86 family of microprocessors. Written by Eric Isaacson, it was first made available as shareware in June 1986. The assembler is contained in one 32K executable and can directly ...

. This location created problems for the airfield during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, as two runways were positioned in front of the rock.

Names

The Rock has been given many names, particularly due to the resemblance of a human face apparent when viewing the eastern mass from the north. This has variously been referred to as the "Duke of Wellington's Nose" and "George III's nose". On Dunn's 18th-century map of Dartmoor, it is labelled as Ullestor Rock or Ulster Rock, but this label was rare by the mid-19th century. Donne's map of 1765 labelled it "Hurstone Rock". In the 16th century, it was known as Udell Torre and it has also been referred to as Udal Tor. Often it is locally referred to as just "The Rock". It has also been called "Yelverton Rock".

Geology

Roborough Rock has two high ends and a lower middle section. The height was historically more uniform, until the middle section was removed for road maintenance in 1830.

References

{{coord, 50.4854, -4.0938, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Landforms of Devon Dartmoor Rock formations of England Tors of Dartmoor