Folklore

Tregeseal
Stone Circle

“I should not choose to walk the moor at night; but a neurotic modern would have had nothing to fear on that sunny September morning. Nevertheless, it was with a sensation, not entirely pleasant, of passing from the land of humans to the land of shades that I left the last farm behind and crossed the moor, near the barrow where the famous Tregeseal urn was found, now in the British Museum, in search of the Tregeseal stone circles – two circles seventy-five feet apart. In one, sixty-nine feet in diameter, eight stones are erect and five prostrate; in the other only two are standing, but three more may be found upright in the hedge.

The outlying landmarks or sighting-lines from the eastern Tregeseal circle, probably used by the astronomer priests, are, Sir Norman Lockyer suggests, the Longstone, a monolith ten feet high, on a hillside one and a half miles to the north-east, the apex of Carn Kenidzhek, barrows and holed stones.

He gives the following table as “the meanings of the various alignments”:-
Decl. N. Star
Apex of Carn...42d.33’0” Arcturus 2330B.C.
Barrow 800’ dist..40d.29’0” Arcturus 1970B.C.
Two Barrows 900’ dist. 25d. 20’21” Solstitial?
Holed Stones..23d. 2’20” Solstitial?
Longstone......16d.2’0” May Sun
Stone.............9d. 15’0” Pleiades 1270B.C.”

C. Lewis Hind – “Days in Cornwall” (1907)