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Bosporthennis Quoit

Prehistoric Hut?

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Is it prehistoric? And what period of pre-historyes it come from? Has it been excavated?

I didn't know about this one until know ... it's lovely. I wish they'd excavate a few of the 'clochans' around Cork and Kerry. There they have intact beehive huts that are assumed to be early Christian (used as over-night camp sites by pilgrims on the way to the island monasteries). Looking at some of them I think they could be older.

We know that corbelled roofing was used in the Neolithic, but the builders usually relied on the cantilevering weight of the cairn or mound covering the chamber to hold it all together. A freestanding corbelled roof is quite a technological achievement.

Had a quick look at Ian Cooke's 'Journey to the Stones' but he's mostly descriptive & doesn't really say what 'period' it sposed to be from. I'd guess iron age from what I've read & from seeing similar stuff like iron age huts, the Carn Euny subterranean beehive, fogous etc. On the page for it here, pure joy's posted this:

Craig Weatherhill believes that this is actually an aboveground fogou. In "Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall & Scilly" (Cornwall Books - 1985, revised 1997 & 2000) he writes of "a scattered settlement of at least three Iron Age/Romano-British courtyard houses and several round houses in a sheltered spot at the eastern base of Hannibal's carn. In a central position within the settlement is the intriguing 'beehive hut', now regarded as an aboveground fogou from its strong resemblance to the Phase 1 structure at Carn Euny. It had a round, corbelled chamber 4.0m across (the lintelled entrance from the south-west is modern), connect by way of a low, heavily built portal to a small, oblong chamber 3.3m by 2.1m, which was its original entrance passage (the wall blocking the south-east end is also modern). Both chambers are now roofless. The best preserved of the courtyard houses, with an adjoining paddock and walls up to 1.5m high, lies 180m to the west of the fogou; another, 60m south of the fogou, has a medieval cowshouse built inside its courtyard."

love

Moth

I reckon this one was probably turfed, rather than a bloody great mound.