Visited 10.4.10. This hillfort is very easy to access - only 5 minutes up from the car park with cracking views all around - although the path is quite steep and rocky. There are massive boulders all over this hill - including a huge square shaped one just before the 'gateway' stones. I returned to this site the following evening to watch the sun go down - beautiful.
Directions: Take the lane south of hillfort. Not far past Flax cottage (on the left) you will find the National Trust car park on your right. Through the gate directly in front of you, then follow the obvious path through the trees and up to the hillfort.
Scissorman is absolutely right, the views from this hillfort are some of the best you'll see anywhere. It appears to be made up of a single rampart on the south and east sides where the land falls steeply away. The northern and western sides appears more complicated with inner and outer walls/banks and ditches.
The hillfort was donated to the national trust and is dedicated to the memory of all the women who died locally in WWII.
Trencrom Hill is always overlooked, yet provides incredible views over the whole of West Cornwall, with Mounts Bay to the south and St Ives bay to the north. The view to the East provides tremendous unspoilt views past carn Brea and on towards the clay pits.
The hill itself is an iron age hill fort. Park at the car park at the southern base of the hill, then walk along the bottm of the hill, keeping the hill to your left. The path will split and you must take the left hand route, which will lead you through bracken up the side of the hill. Hidden off to the left on your ascent is a sealed well, thought to have holy properties but now too dangerous to leave open, due to the depths it was sunk to.
Keep ascending until you enter the fort through a very obvious stone pillared gateway. There are exposed granite boulders in the settlement that proved wonderful seating for eating and viewing.
The remains of two huts can be seen sunken into the earth.
Take dowsing rods, as the reading here can provide great interest, with central energy flow coming from St Michaels Mount, through Trencrom and out towards Ireland. Smaller sources seem to track water flow around the hill.
A visit on a summers evening for sunset is a never to be forgotten experience.
A local newspaper, in 1883 (Cornishman), gives the following:-
"Superstitions die hard. -- A horse died the other day on a farm in the neighbourhood of St. Ives. Its carcase was dragged on a Sunday away up to the granite rock basins and weather-worn bosses of Trecroben hill, and there burnt, in order to drive away the evil spell, or ill-wishing, which afflicted the farm where the animal belonged."
On p195 of
Cornish Folk-Lore. Part III. [Continued]
M. A. Courtney
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 5, No. 3. (1887), pp. 177-220.
A lot of effort - so a deliberate effort to take it to a particular place? Or is it just that burning horses are very stinky.
Trencrom Hill was also used as a spot from which to throw stones at St Michael's Mount:
In several parts of Cornwall there are evidences that these Titans were a sportive race. Huge rocks are preserved to show where they played at trap-ball, at hurling, and other athletic games. The giants of Trecrobben and St Michael's Mount often met for a game at bob-buttons. The Mount was the "bob," on which flat masses of granite were placed to serve as buttons, and Trecrobben Hill was the "mit," or the spot from which the throw was made. This order was sometimes reversed. On the outside of St Michael's Mount, many a granite slab which had been knocked off the "bob" is yet to be 'found; and numerous piles of rough cubical masses of the same rock, said to be the granite of Trecrobben Hill, [a] show how eagerly the game was played.
Hunt mentions that "Trecrobben Hill still exhibits the bowl in which the giants of the west used to wash." - so you may wish to keep your eyes open for this if you visit. This is presumably 'The Bowl Rock', on the stream to the NE, judging from the OS map.
On the summit of this hill, which is only surpassed in savage grandeur by Cam Brea, the giants built a castle--the four entrances to which still remain in Cyclopean massiveness to attest the Herculean powers by which such mighty blocks were piled upon each other. There the giant chieftains dwelt in awful state. Along the serpentine road, passing up the hill to the principal gateway, they dragged their captives, and on the great flat rocks within the castle they sacrificed them. Almost every rock still bears some name connected with the giants--"a race may perish, but the name endures." The treasures of the giants who dwelt here are said to have been buried in the days of their troubles, when they were perishing before the conquerors of their land. Their gold and jewels were hidden deep in the granite caves of this hill, and secured by spells as potent as those which Merlin placed upon his "hoarded treasures." They are securely preserved, even to the present day, and carefully guarded from man by the Spriggans, or Trolls, of whom we have to speak in another page.
Another story about the Spriggans from Trencrom Hill can also be found amid Hunt's book: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/prwe/prwe045.htm
and hinges on the slightly weird idea that the pixies would be counting their riches at a human's house. The old woman who owned the house stole their money and moved to St Ives. Well that was her excuse for her sudden improvement in wealth at least. However, you can't mess with the pixies: her comeupance was that one touched her clothes, and she had awful pains.
"It is not many years since a man, who thought he was fully informed as to the spot in which a crock of the giant's gold was buried, proceeded on one fine moonlight night to this enchanted hill, and with spade and pick commenced his search. He proceeded for some time without interruption, and it became evident to him that the treasure was not far off. The sky was rapidly covered with the darkest clouds, shutting out the brilliant light o the moon--which had previously gemmed each cairn--and leaving the gold-seeker in total and unearthly darkness. The wind rose, and roared terrifically amidst the rocks; but this was soon drowned amidst the fearful crashes of thunder, which followed in quick succession the flashes of lightning. By its light the man perceived that the spriggans were coming out in swarms from all the rocks. They were in countless numbers; and although they were small at first, they rapidly increased in size, until eventually they assumed an almost giant form, looking all the while, as he afterwards said, "as ugly as if they would eat him." How this poor man escaped is unknown, but he is said to have been so frightened that he took to his bed, and was not able to work for a long time."
Not to be confused with the Giant's Well, this lies to the NW of the hill fort and is reached by a narrow path through a rock outcrop.
This is a striking well, consisting of a square hole cut into the base of an enormous granite outcrop. I can't even imagine how this was constructed! The water is lovely and clear.