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Standing Stone / Menhir
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Men Gurta Menhir - 30.3.2003
Marked on the OS map (Explorer 106) as ‘Longstone’. Just a few metres from ‘The Saint’s Way’. The stone seems to be known by various names - the info plaque called it the St Breock Downs Longstone and translates it as “Menhyr Gun Sen Brioc”.
This is a true stunner. After having seen many of the usual slim, or diamond shaped Cornish menhirs, this is a quartz streaked monstrous slab of rock! I won’t try to describe how to get here as you’ll probably need a map to get it anyway, or you can head for the St Breock wind farm and try to pick up the dead end road that leads up towards it. Lovely views all around, and to the sea. Slight shame that a large rubbishy tip / soon to be bonfire looking thing was close by (complete with small abandoned cement mixer).
The small info plaque says “This is a prehistoric standing stone, perhaps of middle to late Bronze Age (2000-600 BC). The stone originally stood in a setting of quartz pebbles associated with a cairn, which was not used for burials. It was originally 4.9 metres high, but was damaged and its height reduced. Weighing an estimated 16.5 tons it is still the heaviest in Cornwall. The monument figures in local folklore as a medieval and later meeting place, and it was later adopted as a St Breock Parish boundary marker”.This post appears as part of the weblog entry Another Kernow Week |
Posted by pure joy
6th April 2003ce
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