Re: Botallek? | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Botallack 1

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Botallek?

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Rhiannon Aug 5, 2007 20:04:55

Replying to Hob

Found this for you:

"Colonel Forbes Leslie and Dr. Borlase give an engraving of some circles at Botallack, interlacing one another in a most remarkable and inexplicable manner, and my next escursion was in search of these. I am not prepared to say positively that they did not exist when Dr. Borlase wrote, a century ago, or that they do not exist now,* but, although I made careful enquiries, the only thing I could find in the neighbourhood was a circle called the "Nine Maidens"..

*W.C. Borlase, Esq, F.S.A., a descendant of Dr. Borlase, tells me that they stood in front of Botallack Manor House, but do not now exist."

this is from p iii of
A Description of Some Archaic Structures in Cornwall and Devon.
A. L. Lewis
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 1. (1872), pp. i-ix.

Whether you believe any of it is up to you of course, Hob? I don't think Mr Lewis believed it particularly?

Hob Aug 5, 2007 20:41:53

Replying to Rhiannon

Rhiannon wrote:

*W.C. Borlase, Esq, F.S.A., a descendant of Dr. Borlase, tells me that they stood in front of Botallack Manor House, but do not now exist."

Nice one Rhiannon, that at least pins down a putative location.

I've managed to salvage some of the text out of my blurry, underexposed jpegs of the next page of the book. Borlase doesn't give anything useful about the location, but he has a page long waffle about how in one Circle, the Boss Druid would be doing his thing, whilst in another, a sub Druid would be cleaning the Boss Druid's sickle, whilst in the outlying one's novitiate druids could have been busy learning how to read chicken guts etc. etc. All pure conjecture of course, but he seemed quite taken with the place, so I think I am actually inclined to believe that he'd seen something he thought was the real deal.

Rhiannon Aug 5, 2007 20:45:40

Replying to Rhiannon

I guess this is what you read
"“Fronting the gate of Botalac town place”, writes Borlase, “there is a most remarkable miz maze, if I may so term it, of stones set on end, which if Ducaleon himself had thrown behind his back could not sufficiently stood up in greater disorder than they at present appear, but viewing them diligently this March 6th, 1737, I find the largest circle monument there of any I yet have met with, with several subordinate circles, some touching the circumferences, some breaking within it; together with two large erected stones, not many paces from the principal ring.”"
http://west-penwith.org.uk/just4.htm

so even his description admits it's a right muddle - so he's seeing circles where there weren't any? (ah the bind of the enthusiastic antiquarian, I'm sure we've all been there?)