This turned out to be quite a surprise. I wasn't expecting much at all, and although many the stones were horribly littered about, you could still make sense of a chamber (two of the side slabs still stand) and a capstone - albeit a capstone partly morphed into a millstone. It still has enough to satisfy.
It also sits on a nice little mound about 70cms high so you get a real feeling for its size.
Am I the first TMAer to visit this site?
Surprises me, it is not that far from the road although it is not easy to find unless you study the OS map very carefully or as I did aproach it from above (Hannibal's Carn).
It is hidden behind massive stone walls and if you look at the map it is at the end of the Tumulus wording hidden under the NT green boundry line.
A nice little quoit, nothing like Mulfra or Zennor, but it has been tampered with (see folklore).
Here is the quote from Copeland Borlase that tells the story of the strange round capstone, that 'created consternation in the antiquarian world about 1860'*.
The fame of the discovery quickly spread. The Local Antiquarianism of the whole neighbourhood was awakened immediately, and savants of all shapes, sexes, and ages 'visited and inspected' the stone. The sphere for conjecture was of course unlimited, and ranged from Arthur's round table, to the circular tombs of modern Bengal...
But.. edging his way through the crowd which surrounded the monument, until he had reached the front rank, an old man was heard dispelling the fond illusion in the following cruel words:
"Now what are 'e all tellin' of? I do mind when Uncle Jan, he that was the miller down to Polmeor, cum' up 'long to the croft a speering round for a fitty stoan of es mill. And when he had worked 'pon that theere stoan; says he: 'I'll be jist gone to knack un a bit round like'; so he pitched to work; but 'e wouldn't sarve 'es purpose so theere 'e es still. And lor bless yer all, a fine passel o' pepple has been heere for to look 'pon un, but what they sees en un es more than I can tell 'e."
* as Grinsell says in his 'Ancient burial mounds of England' book, quoting Borlase's 'Naenia Cornubiae'.
Borlase tells the story that a local miller tried to make a millstone out of the capstone. For some reason he never finished the job...did bad luck befall him?
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