The dimensions of the cap-stone are thus given by Borlase: – “This quoit is more than forty-seven feet in girt, and nineteen feet long; its thickness in the middle on the eastern edge is sixteen inches, at each end not so much, but at the western edge it is two feet thick.”
The cromlech is sometimes called by the country people the Giant’s Quoit, and occasionally the Giant’s Table. My measurement made the covering-stone forty-six feet in circumference, with a thickness varying from ten to eighteen inches. It is not improbable that the stone has been chipped off at one or two of the corners since the time of Borlase. Between the cromlech and the road are the remains of a stone and earth circular barrow about eighteen feet in diameter.There is an odd tradition that the first battle fought in England was decided in the locality of Lanyon Quoit.
From Rambles in Western Cornwall by the Footsteps of the Giants by J O Halliwell-Phillips (1861).