A[lfred] L[ionel] Lewis, “Prehistoric remains in Cornwall: Part 2 – West Cornwall”

{427}

PREHISTORIC REMAINS IN CORNWALL.

Part 2.—West Cornwall.

By A. L. Lewis, F.C.A.

So long ago as the year 1895 I was permitted to place before the Anthropological Institute a paper on “Prehistoric Remains in Cornwall, Part 1, East Cornwall,” a title which certainly implied that Part 2, West Cornwall, might be {Map} expected to follow. The prehistoric remains of West Cornwall, being for the most part more easy of access than those of East Cornwall, are much better known and have been more frequently described, so that the remarks I shall have to make upon them will be principally in reference to points which have been {428} passed over by previous writers, but a certain amount of description will be necessary even for that purpose.

The best known, though by no means the largest circle in Cornwall, is Dance Maen, or Dawns Maen, five miles west from Penzance. Its diameter is about 76 feet, and it consists at present of nineteen stones, but there is a gap in the eastern side, where another stone may have stood, or which may have been intended as a special entrance; the stones vary from 3¼ to 4½ feet in height, and their width and thickness are in approximate proportion. Mr. Edmonds in his Land’s-End District, published in 1862, said that three of the nineteen stones were fallen; these, however, were set up again before my first visit in 1869, and have apparently remained upright ever since, but, as the field in which the circle stands has been under cultivation for many years, it is not unlikely that some of the stones have been slightly shifted from time to time, and that the irregularity of the intervals between them, and some differences between the measurements of {Photo} Mr. Lukis, Mr. Tregelles, and myself may be accounted for in that way. This circle is also called the “Merry Maidens,” on account of a tradition that the stones were girls who were turned into stone pillars for dancing on Sunday, and two monoliths, 15 and 13 feet high, which stand 317 feet apart, the nearest being 1050 feet, and 40 degrees east of north from the circle, are called the “Pipers.” According to the 6-inch ordnance map a line drawn through these stones would pass outside the north-western quarter of the circle, but Mr. Tregelles, after careful examination, thought they were in line with its centre, but, as it is not certain whether either of them could ever have been seen from the circle, it might be doubted whether there were any real connection between them, but for the tradition which I have mentioned. Another stone 9 feet high, called the Goon Rith or Longstone, is at very nearly the same distance from the circle as the “Pipers,” but is 9 degrees south of west and plainly visible from it; 196½ feet {429} and 8 degrees west of north from the nearest stone of the circle is a stone 5 feet 4 inches high, with a hole 5¼ inches in diameter through the upper part of it; this stone is now used as a gate-post, and may perhaps not now occupy its original position. On the other side of the circle, slightly east of south, and about 49 feet away from its circumference, are two stones lying in the field, similar in size to those composing the circle; these probably stood upright originally, and formed an entrance, or, it may be, part of an avenue leading up to the circle, as there are other stones further away in nearly the same direction; these two stones were there in 1869, 1891, and in 1898, but have not been previously noticed, so far as I know, and I was informed in 1891 that, although the circle was protected, these stones were not; still, it can hardly be doubted that they were connected with the circle, as they lie in a well-proportioned position—16 to 17 feet apart, and just three times that distance from the circle, so as to form a suitable entrance to it. In 1869 there was also a small stone lying against a wall about 120 feet northeast from the circle, in the direction of the “Pipers,” which might have formed part of the system. Mr. Lukis says of the “Pipers” and “Goon Rith” stone that they and five barrows in the immediate vicinity “imply a necropolis,” but that, although the ground round these stones has been dug into, no traces of interment have been found.

An old stonebreaker, who told me in 1898 that he had been in the place for seventy years, said he knew a man who had dug against one of the “Pipers” and found a potfull of ashes; this, if true, was evidently not known to Messrs. Borlase and Lukis, but one potfull of ashes does not make much of a “necropolis.” The same old man said with regard to the holed stone, that it had been moved from its original position, where it had stood in connection with another holed stone, and that when the sun shone through the holes in some particular way “they called it Midsummer”; this may be only a repetition of something said by modern visitors, but it may, on the other hand, be an echo of an old tradition, so it is perhaps worth recording. [429.1]

The “Nine Maidens” circle at Boscawen-un is about four miles and a half from Penzance, to the south of the Land’s-End road, and about three miles north-west from “Dance Maen” circle. It consists of nineteen stones, at an average distance of about 11 feet, with a gap on the west, which may or may not have been occupied by another stone; its diameters are 82–88 feet from north-west to south-east, and 71–72 feet from north-east to south-west. On a line running from south-west to north-east, through the centre, there is within the circle a stone, south-west from the centre, but leaning 3 feet towards it, and pointing as it were to some fallen stones lying across the circumference of the circle at the north-east, which some have thought to be the remains of a dolmen, but which {430} others, including myself, have thought to be the remains of another stone, which probably stood inside the circle at the north-east, matching that which still stands or leans at the south-west. “416 yards away on the north-east,” says Mr. Tregelles, [430.1] “is a menhir, 8 feet high, standing on the moor, marked on the 6-inch ordnance map as ‘Stone cross,’ it would, if the hedges were removed, be visible from the circle. In a lane leading from the farm to the road is another menhir, 10 feet high, and 690 yards north-east of the circle, but not visible from it. A line drawn through the two menhirs would pass to the north of the circle.” In a letter to me, dated October 10th, 1893, he says:—“the menhirs there, although running in the right direction, are not in line with the circle; there is another menhir on the east-south-east of the circle, which I omitted to mention, and this is plainly visible from the circle.” I may point out, however, that in this circle the reference to the north-east is made by the leaning stone and possibly by the fallen stone inside the ring, and does not depend upon the menhirs outside mentioned by Mr. Tregelles. Miss Elizabeth Carne, the owner of this circle, caused a trench to be dug through it in or about 1862, but nothing was found—a not uncommon experience, which tends to show that these circles were not sepulchral. Someone who has examined the foundations of the leaning stone has stated that its slope is not accidental, but was specially arranged. One of the stones of the circle is a mass of white quartz; it is at the south-west.

Lanyon Quoit (4½ miles north-west from Penzance) is popularly better known than any other Cornish antiquity, because it is a favourite object for photographers, but, as it was blown down in 1815, and set up again in 1824, without any attempt to place its stones in their original position, it cannot be regarded as a representative of any type of monument, or of any value from a purely archæological point of view. It consists of a capstone 16½ feet by 9 feet, supported by three stones about 5 feet high; these however were originally 7 feet high; three other stones lie flat on the ground, which may have formed with the others, part of the walls of a chamber. Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt says an interment was found in the ground underneath this monument in the middle of the eighteenth century (Long Ago, March, 1874).

A little way from this monument are three stones known as West Lanyon Quoit. Up to 1790 these were buried in a mound, from which nearly one hundred cart-loads of earth were removed before the stones were discovered: under them were found an urn and some bones broken. Of the three stones, one, 13½ feet long, and from 7 to 9½ feet wide, leans against a standing stone 5½ feet high and broad, the third is a stump 18 inches high, which however helps to support the leaning stone. Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt says in the article already mentioned that the standing stone was the south end of a chamber of which the two side stones 10½ and 9 feet long, with another to make the second up to 10½, were there, but that the north end {431} was open; the sides of the chamber had disappeared before my visit and it seems doubtful whether the great stone was ever placed on the others as a capstone.

Chun Quoit is another sepulchral chamber a little more than a mile from West Lanyon; it is still partly buried in a cairn, and consists of four upright stones supporting a cover, and is about 5 feet high and square inside; the interior is half full of small loose stones, which appear to have formed a dry walling up of an entrance between two of the larger stones, after this wall was pushed into the chamber the larger stones slipped a little and closed up the entrance. On the top of a hill near is Chun Castle, a double circular wall of loose stones, with the remains of some cross divisions between, which probably formed dwellings and storehouses. Mr. Edmonds has remarked that Chun Quoit and Castle and Lanyon and West Lanyon Quoits are nearly in a line east and west, but I do not think that any importance is to be attached to this.

At Tregaseal, near St. Just, six miles west-north-west from Penzance, are the remains of two circles, about due east and west from each other, called the “Nine Maidens,” or, according to Dr. Borlase, the Tregaseal Dancing Stones, the centres of which are about 145 feet, and the circumferences 70 feet apart from each other. The western circle is almost destroyed, and four stones of it are embedded in a fence which separates it from the eastern circle; its diameter, according to Mr. Lukis, was 72½ feet, but, so far as I can judge from his own plan, it seems more likely to have been between 77 and 78 feet. The eastern circle consisted, when I measured it in 1869, of nine upright and four fallen stones; Mr. Lukis, who planned it in 1879, found the same number of stones, but, during the interval, one stone that I found standing had fallen, and one that I found fallen had been set up again; Mr. Tregelles in 1893, found only eight stones standing and five fallen, which agrees with my own notes of a second visit in 1891, but on a third visit in 1898 one of the fallen stones had disappeared altogether, and, when Mr. Tregelles measured the circle again in 1902, the last stone left standing on its eastern side had fallen. These dilapidations and restorations make it difficult to ascertain the original diameter; Mr. Lukis said it was 65 feet, but it is in fact 69 feet, in at least one direction if not in all; in this case, as in some others, Mr. Lukis has stated his measurements rightly on his plan, but has worked them out incorrectly; when properly put together his measurement of this circle, like my own, gives a diameter of 69 feet, which is exactly 33 cubits of 25·1 inches. The original number of stones in the eastern circle was most likely not 25, as Mr. Lukis has suggested, but 21, with an average interval of 10 feet from centre to centre; the western circle, judging from the spaces between the remaining stones, may have possessed only sixteen stones with an average interval of 14 feet from centre to centre; none of the stones are more than 4 feet high, and their width varies from 1 foot to 2 feet in the eastern circle, and from 2 feet to 3 feet in the other. Dr. Borlase, in 1738, said the eastern circle had seventeen stones standing (now only seven), two prostrate, and one broken off, and that its diameter was 23 paces, which at 3 feet to the {432} pace gives 69 feet; in the western circle he found ten stones standing and four prostrate, and he estimated the diameter at 26 paces, or 78 feet; these diameters it will be observed are the same as I have deduced from independent observations. The remarkable and picturesque granite masses of Carn Kenidjack are 10 degrees east of north from these circles, and half a mile away; on Longstone Down, rather less than a mile off, in a direction 27 degrees north of east, is a menhir, of which Mr. Tregelles says the top is now just visible from the eastern circle over a hedge, but if that were removed it could be plainly seen, and, allowing for the height of the ridge, would be near the point of midsummer sunrise, though rather too far east; it would however fit the Beltane sunrise. A quarter of a mile from the circles, in a direction north-east by north, there is also a row, 53 feet long, of four holed stones, running north-east and south-west; they are all fallen, and, as I have not seen them all myself, I do not know whether, when they were upright, as they doubtless originally were, they were visible from the circles or not, but, as they would have been about 4 feet high, I should think they could have been seen from them.

The Men-an-Tol is on the moors, north of Lanyon Quoit. It is a stone about 3½ feet high and wide, and 1 foot thick, through the middle of which is a circular hole, 18 inches in diameter; about 8 feet from each side of this stone, in a line through the hole, 57 to 58 degrees east of north and west of south, is an upright stone 3 to 4 feet high, and there are two similar stones each about 38 feet west from the holed stone, one of which has fallen, and one on the east at about the same distance; this last stone is omitted in Mr. Lukis’ plan, dated 1879, but was noted by me in 1869, by Mr. Dymond in 1876, and again by me in 1891. Mr. Dymond also found two other stones to the north-west, nearly buried, which neither Mr. Lukis nor I observed; it seems likely that all these formed part of a circle surrounding the holed stone and the two upright stones equidistant from it; a fallen stone which is lying by the western of these latter stones may have belonged to such a circle and have been removed to its present position. It has been suggested that there were here formerly two chambers, with the holed stone as a communication between them, and that the side stones, capstones, and earthen covering have all been removed, leaving only the middle and two end stones; there is no evidence in favour of this supposition, and the probabilities are greatly against it, especially as the two uprights are not at all like the usual endings of chambers, but are very like the pillar stones of the circles. With regard to the hole Mr. Lukis says that it has been made by picking away the opposite sides, but not equally, that this was obviously intentional, and that the deeper of the two sinkings being on the east suggests that its use, whatever it may have been, was from that side, and, if so, that “sun worship had nothing to do with the ceremony for the actor would have had to turn his back upon that luminary.” Mr. Robert Hunt, however, says (in Popular Romances of the West of England, p. 415)—“the Holed Stone—Men-an-Tol—in Lanyon is commonly called by the peasantry the crickstone; through this the sufferer (from rickets or a crick in the back) was drawn nine times against the sun, or if a man, he was to crawl through the hole nine times.” It {433} seems therefore that Mr. Lukis was wrong both as to the direction from which the hole was used and in his consequent assumption that worship or rather observance of the sun had no place in the ceremony. Mr. W. C. Borlase cut a trench between these stones but discovered nothing but a fractured flint.

Near the Men-an-Tol is the Men Scryffys, a stone 6½ feet high by 1½ broad, and thick, on which is inscribed “Rialobran Cunoval Fil.”

Not far from this is the Boskednan circle called, like so many others, the “Nine Maidens,” though it consisted originally of not less than nineteen and perhaps of as many as thirty stones; its diameter is about 70 feet. There are now eight stones standing or leaning and three fallen, but Dr. Borlase figured thirteen standing and six fallen in 1769. Those remaining are from 4 to 6½ feet high, the tallest being about 30° west of north from the centre, and appearing to have formed one side of a special entrance. In nearly the same direction the summit of Carn Galva, a remarkable mass of granite, rises above and a short distance beyond the ridge which forms the horizon, this is the same direction as that of Skiddaw from the circle near Keswick in Cumberland, and, just as that circle has to the north-east the apparently triple summit of Blencathra, so the Boskednan circle has in the same direction a group of three little hills. At the south-east of the circle is a barrow about 33 feet in diameter and 3 feet high; it contained a cist, the contents of which had been scattered at an early and unknown period, but Mr. W. C. Borlase found near it the fragments of a sepulchral urn, provided with small cleats or handles, and ornamented with the usual twisted cord pattern; the edge of this barrow touched the south-eastern edge of the circle and perhaps even infringed upon it.

Two hundred yards or more to the north-west are the remains of a barrow about 34 feet in diameter, with two small stones near the centre, which may have formed part of a cist or chamber, and four more standing round the edge of the barrow, three at the south, 2½ to 3 feet high, and one at the north, 5 feet high; four others about 5 feet long are piled together at the west, probably removed from their original position with a view to taking them away altogether, for Mr. Blight described this circle in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March, 1868, as possessing twelve stones.

Some distance north-east from this circle is Zennor Quoit, returning from which to Penzance Mulfra Quoit may also be seen. Both these were probably sepulchral chambers, but the capstones have slipped off, and lean against some of the supporting stones. Not far from Mulfra Quoit are the remains of a remarkable group of “ beehive” chambers at Chrysoister, Gulval; these have lost their roofs and some of the larger enclosures may not have been covered at all, though some of the smaller ones are known to have had “beehive” roofs formerly; in one of the chambers or enclosures is a peculiar stone basin. In plan there is a certain slight resemblance between these remains and those of Hagiar Kim in Malta, but it is probably only that kind of likeness which obtains between monuments belonging to a similar phase of culture. Hagiar Kim is for the most part constructed of upright {434} stones set closely together. Chrysoister is made of dry masonry and its real connection is with similar remains in the Hebrides.

Coming eastward from Penzance a stop may be made at St. Erth Railway Station, from which the Trencrom or Trecrobben hill fort may easily be reached. It is situated on a high detached hill, and commands an extensive view from St. Michael’s Mount or one side to St. Ives’ Bay on the other; there are masses of natural rock on and around the top which are joined together by double walls of dry masonry, the space between the walls being filled in with earth and small stones and so formed into a continuous rampart. A friend had told me that he thought he had found a circle of thirteen stones in the centre of the interior quite perfect except that all but one had fallen; this seemed to me to be very important as establishing a more complete connection between the circles and camps than has as yet been shown to have existed, but the only circles that I could find upon the hill appeared to me to have been hut circles.

Another form of ancient dwelling, of which some examples are found in West Cornwall, is a long underground passage with little chambers opening out in it or from it; one of these, called the Fogou, is not far from Dance Maen. No account of prehistoric remains in West Cornwall should omit to mention those on Carnbrae, near Redruth, but any description of them would be too long for the present occasion; full particulars with illustrations are, however, to be found in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall.