TORS OF THE BRITISH ISLES

Mike Lewis

Head of Geography, Northamptonshire Grammar School,

Northampton, England, UK

Tors are towers of delicately balanced rocks and boulders which are found on hilltops notably on Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor in south west England. As geomorphological forms they have attracted considerable attention. David Linton was the first to employ the term tor to similar features occurring in different parts of the country including the gritstone tors of the English Pennines and the granite tors of the Cairngorms and Scottish Islands. The term is now more widely used to describe these landforms in different parts of the world.This site provides a review of the main theories regarding the formation of tors with some personal observations regarding structural controls and Pleistocene glacial history in the British Isles