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 Head To Head The Modern Antiquarian Carn Brea Forum | Start a topic | Search |
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| Hi Goffik The early photos of Boscawen Un by Preston, Gibson and others do show a wall surrounding the circle with steps leading up and within the larger field. I have scans of the originals of most of the Boscawen Un photos held at the Royal Institution of Cornwall (including the original of the Hencken photo which is much clearer than that in the book), and these show the circle from many angles and are mostly late 19th or early 20th century, so I can, with the aid of these, tell you that the wall totally surrounds the circle with gap of about 15-20 feet between the wall and the stones. The edge of the wall, the part showing the steps in Hencken (I think that this is a late 19th century Gibson photo), is about 8-10 feet beyond where the gate at the end of the lane is. The circle does appear to be sitting on a platform, about 18 inches high. The wall appears to be about 3 feet high so the platform would have been about half way up the interior of the surrounding wall at this time. The wall is still there and the ground on which the circle sits is still higher than the surrounding land of the larger field beyond, though this is difficult to notice, especially on modern photos, due to the bracken and gorse surrounding the circle and covering the wall. I certainly don't remember the steps being there now, but I may be mistaken. The wall is shown on the 1st edition 6 inch OS map of 1888 as it is in the 1:25000 plan of 1980. Indeed it is still shown on the current online OS map. M J Fletcher, in the RCHME field report for the site, dated 27 Oct 1985, mentions that the site is "within a 19th century walled enclosure which is located in a shallow depression". The larger field containing the circular enclosure has a bulge at the north showing where the circular wall extends beyond the original field, which was as it is now but minus the bulge, and the northern section of the wall of the larger field originally bisected the circle (near the group of stones mentioned below), as shown in William Cotton's plan of 1826. Incidentally, the other part of the circle bisected by this wall is now where the 'entrance' is, and any stone which may have existed here originally may have been destroyed, either during the construction or destruction of the wall. If I remember I'll take a look at the c.1840 tithe map of St Buryan when I'm back at work next week to see how it looks, and will try to see if we hold any earlier manorial maps of the area (though this area would have been part of the Boscawen family's lands and Lord Falmouth still has all of the archives). I'll also take a look at the GIS mapping data of my colleagues at the Historic Environment Service, on which I can zoom right in to the individual stones to see exactly how it appears now. I'll also try to pop down one weekend and check it out on the ground. I have, by the way, all of the long listings for the RCHME National Monuments Record for all Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial and sepulchral monuments, excepting round barrows (too many of these to afford), for Cornwall, Scilly, Devon and the Somerset part of Exmoor, so any queries with regard to these can be sent to me at the email address given in my user profile, but try to make them not look like spam as I get so much of this I tend to go into automatic when deleting. "Question about" then name of site should do. For Hob. There are two partially buried stones on the north east perimeter of the circle and these are given by Vivien Russell as the remains of a barrow; Cotton figures them a portico or entrance, and they are shown on the plan in Hencken, p53, and in John Barnett's Prehistoric Cornwall, p160 (though not in the plan in Stone Circles of Britain, p71). Maen yu daus is undoubtedly the Merry Maidens, or Dawns Maen (or variants thereof), though I have, very rarely, also seen this name given for other circles in Penwith. Hope this helps, Chris. Reply | with quote |  18th April 2007ce 19:32 In reply to: Re: Borlase (goffik) |
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