Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

Nearest town:
Padstow (11km N)
OS reference:
SW945624
OS sheet:
200
Latitude:
50° 25' 29.32 N
Longitude:
4° 53' 36.63 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb) (Hillfort) by phil

The stone in the fore ground is obviously a partner to the other that has now been covered. Both are touching the edge of the Bronze age barrow.

phil
phil Jun 26, 2003
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Image of Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb) (Hillfort) by phil

This stone lies near the north barrow. It is a photo I took about 2 years ago. It is clearly something to do with the barrow. There is another stone about 8 feet away of a similar size.

You will not see this stone any more as "Cornish Heritage" have seen fit to place an information board on top of it.

The stone is not visible anymore!

phil
phil Jun 25, 2003
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Articles

Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

Jane Stanley Paints Castle An Dinas

Howburn Digger
Howburn Digger Aug 21, 2014
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Follow link to see the artwork.

strangehistory.net/2014/08/21/jane-stanley-paints-castle-dinas/

Jane Stanley is an extremely talented archaeological reconstruction artist, based out of Cornwall. Castle-an-Dinas is an Iron Age fort in the middle of that county, a six-acre site second only, in terms of its natural charisma, to South Cadbury in Somerset. Put Jane and Castle-an-Dinas together and you get some of the best historical fiction around, though historical fiction by brush stroke.

Cornwall Council commissioned Jane to do a series of paintings of Castle-an-Dinas. What makes this series (to the best of my knowledge) unique is that they are not just different aspects of the site (a deer kill, a burial, a hosting…) They are the site over perhaps twenty five centuries. We put them up here with a link to Jane’s facebook page, hoping that neither she nor Cornwall Council will send a cease and desist order: they are available in a pdf online; also given the quality of Jane’s work we take pleasure in pointing out a recent book, A Brush with the Past. Beach’s credit card has presently maxed out but as soon as everything is back up and functioning… The image at the head of the post shows the creation of the two bronze age tombs at the head of Dinas: the second picture immediately below shows, instead, the Iron Age fort that followed on. As is typical of these sites the Iron Age was all too happy to leave the Bronze Age in place. The stronghold was crowned by two tombs from centuries before.

So far this is the normal fare of archeaeological art (albeit it at the best end of the market). Now though we turn to more recent times. In the first days of March 1645 a mauled Royalist army camped out in old Iron Age vallum. Cornwall was an overwhelmingly Royalist area, but here the decision was made to surrender. The fight was impossible by this date and two days later the Royal Standard was given up to the Parliamentarians at Bodmin: a black day. Britain would labour under the ‘Protector’ for fifteen wasted years.

The next picture is a curiosity. Cornwall is mining country, but it was not until Britain’s straitened circumstances in the First World War that the decision was made to sink a shaft here in search of Wolfram of all things. Love the combination of Edwardian industrial might and Iron Age landscape.

Then my favourite picture of them all. In the 1960s a Pennsylvanian archaeologist, Bernard Wailes carried out a multi-year professional dig at the site. Bizarrely, though this sometimes happens in archaeology, he never got his act together to actually publish the findings. There were two brief notes in a Cornish journal. Castle-An-Dinas waits another archaeological hero, preferably one though that has time to dig and write.

Here are the pictures that Jane missed or that Cornwall Council did not commission. First, there are Arthurian rumours about the fort: a bit of desperate Romano-British sheltering might have been fun. Second, the fort was used by smugglers in the modern period: barrels being rolled out of the way of excise? Third, there are reports of great furze fires in the modern period at night. By all accounts the whole countryside could see Castle-an-Dinas in flames for miles around.

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Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

Walk and talk by Cornwall Heritage Trust

Chance
Chance Jul 5, 2010
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Walk: Castle-an-Dinas

Sun 25 July 13.30 & 16.00

Meet at car park on the hill, Castle-an-Dinas, near St. Columb Major

Gentle walk around this magnificent hill with its Iron Age fort revealing its history through time.

Cornwall Heritage Trust – 01872 572725

[email protected]

www.cornwallheritagetrust.org/

Event part of the Festival of British Archaeology – 17th July to 1st August 2010

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Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

B
Beebon Sep 16, 2014
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Visited 09.09.2014.

As mentioned below, access to the site is very easily up a gracelly track with a small car park with a very short walk.

It was a beautiful evening when I visited, the evening sunshine was slightly hazy so my view from the tope of the site was restricted but it added a wonderful atmosphere.

The ramparts are imp[ressively well preserved and much bigger than I was expecting. I visited with my father and we had a good look around the place, only bumping into one other person.

Well worth checking this plce out!

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Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

C
CARL Apr 27, 2012
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Visited 16.4.12

This is a cracker of a site and well worth a visit.

Access is easy as the Hillfort is sign posted and there is a rough car park which is reached via an equally rough track. It is at the back of some farm buildings.

The walk from the car park up to the site only takes about 5 minutes.

The Hillfort is well preserved with 3 sets of ramparts ranging in height from 2 metres to 4 metres.

The two Barrows in the middle of the site have certainly seen better days but at least they are still with us. Both of the Barrows are about 0.5 metres high and 10 metres across. One of the Barrows has a large stone lying in it.

There are good views to be had in all directions.

As with every other site I visited in Cornwall this week I had the place to myself.

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Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

Mr Hamhead
Mr Hamhead Apr 9, 2007
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Thi is another of those sites in Cornwall that I have past many times but never bothered to explore.....and another that after you make the effort you ask yourself why you have never done it before.

Castle-an-Dinas is LARGE!

Easy to reach just off the A30...which will shortly be closer to it when the new road opens...there is a handy carpark so that even those who do not want to walk far can access the site.

The whole place is full of history, not just the Iron Age fortress but also the 20th century wolfram mine buildings that flank the car park.

But it is the prehistory that will entice those who read this...

Fingerposts now guide you around the castle to preserve banks that have been badly eroded over the years by those who head straight for the top. Follow the posts, its worth it, you get to see far more of the site...in fact I would reccommend walking around in circles until you have done them all....

Once in the centre of the fort you will notice at least two mounds, all that remain of earlier tumuli, and a pond and eveidence of excavation, from a later period. I am sure the views on a good day are fantastic, it was a little hazy when I was there....good excuse to return!

Was this THE Iron Age castle of Cornwall?, I think it's the biggest...and being central between both coasts I think it must be. The hill fort at St Dennis is just across Goss Moor where evidence of Bronze Age tin streaming has been found. Beyond St Dennis the China Clay waste tips have obliterated any other prehistory many years ago but to the north the Nine maidens and Pawton Quoit are not far away....

But I waffle....make a detour when heading west..climb to the top and take in Cornwall...its worth it.

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Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

pure joy
pure joy Jan 8, 2003
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Castle-an-Dinas (Restormel District) – 24.12.2002

SW945624 – Not to be confused with the Castle-an-Dinas in Penwith (Land's End) this magnificent hill fort is well signposted from the road that runs past it, just West of Providence (Cornwall has some great hamlet names). From this road, a steep-ish rough lane takes you up to a rough car park. Then it's a short walk up to the hill fort.

The Cornwall Heritage Trust took over the site in 1988 and have recently put up info boards at the car park and up towards the fort. They also unveiled a brand new panoramic plate in the interior of the fort in June 2002, which amongst other local landmarks, points out the Nine Maidens Stone Row three miles to the North.

This massive Iron Age hill fort (thought to be occupied circa 400BC to 150 AD) has stunning views all around, excellent multiple ramparts, and stands at 700 feet above sea level. Two Bronze Age barrows are which the interior, the North one of which (near to the panoramic plate) is now a hollow with a stone lying in it.

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Folklore

Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)
Hillfort
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Apr 22, 2013
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The fort is mentioned in a miracle play written down in 1504: 'Beunans Meriasek' – the Life of St Meriasek. It's been suggested that it's a subversively anti-English. It was written in Cornish, which few toffs would understand, and the villain is called Teudar, which sounds remarkably like Tudor. Teudar is an invader who is reigning by force. Meriasek says he needs baptising but Teudar isn't having it and wants Meriasek hanged. The saint is warned in a vision and hides easily from Teudar's soldiers under a rock, consecrating the spring there to cure the insane, and then runs off to Britanny.

The second part of the play introduces Teudar's nemesis, the Duke of Cornwall, who vows to get rid of Teudar for having driven away the saint.

Me yv duk in oll kernow

indella ytho ov thays

hag vhel arluth in pov

a tamer the pen an vlays

tregys off lemen heb wov

berth in castel an dynas

sur in peddre

ha war an tyreth vhel

thym yma castel arel

a veth gelwys tyndagyel

henna yv o[v]fen tregse

I am Duke in all Cornwall:

So was my father,

And a high lord in the country

From Tamar to the end of the kingdom.

I am dwelling now, without a lie,

Within the castle of Dynas

Surely in Pidar,

And in the high land

I have another castle,

Which is called Tyntagel:

That is my chief dwelling-seat.

Pydar is one of the hundreds of Cornwall. You can see the play here in Whitley Stokes' translation, published 1872. There is much interesting discussion of it here in J P D Cooper's 'Propaganda and the Tudor State' (2003).

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Folklore

Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)
Hillfort
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Aug 17, 2012
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This is really extremely unpleasant but I suppose it conceivably gives an insight into the way people saw this fort at the time – I have no proof but you would imagine the gibbet to be actually on or within its walls as it is the high point of the eponymous downs. It dimly brought to my mind the way Hardy uses Stonehenge as a wild no-man's land for Tess of the D'urbervilles. As though it represented the opposite of somewhere civilised, somewhere apt for the end of someone uncivilised (not that anyone deserves such a way to go). Am I overanalysing, it is possible. It's so horrible I wonder if I should post it, for potentially spoiling the atmosphere there for anyone that reads this and visits :)

"Anne, the daughter John Pollard, of this parish [St. Columb], and Loveday, the daughter of Thomas Rosebere, of the parish of Enoder, were buried on the 23rd day of June, 1671, who were both barbarously murdered the day before in the house of Capt'n Peter Pollard on the bridge, by one John the son of Humphrey and Cicely Trehembern, of this parish, about 11 of the clock in the forenoon upon a market day."

The following tradition is given in connection with the above:= "A bloodhound was obtained and set upon the trail, which it followed up a narrow lane, to the east of the union-house, named Tremen's-lane; at the head, the hound made in an oblique direction towards the town, and in a narrow alley, known as Wreford's-row, it came upon the murderer in his father's house, and licked his boots, which were covered in blood."

The sentence on Tremen was "that he be confined in an iron cage on the Castle Downs, 2 miles from St. Columb, and starved to death." While in confinement he was visited by a country woman on her way home from market. The prisoner begged earnestly for something to eat; the woman informed him that she had nothing in the shape of food but a pound of candles; this being given him, he ate them in a ravenous manner. It's a saying here, in reference to a scapegrace, that he is a regular Tremen.

Richard Cornish. St. Columb.

From v1 of the Western Antiquary (June 1881).

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Miscellaneous

Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)
Hillfort
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 16, 2006
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Castle an Dinas was mentioned briefly by Richard Carew in his 1600s 'Survey of Cornwall':

Neere to Belowdy, commonly, & not vnproperly, termed Beelowzy, the top of a hill is enuironed with deep treble trenches, which leaue a large playne space in the midst: they call it Castellan Danis... and it seemeth (in times past) to haue bin a matter of moment, the rather, for that a great cawsey (now couered with grasse) doth lead vnto it.
Online courtesy of Project Gutenberg at

gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/srvcr10.txt

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Miscellaneous

Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)
Hillfort
phil
phil Oct 28, 2001
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1mile N of A30 at Goss Moor

This magnificent Iron Age Celtic Fort dates from about the 2nd or 3rd Century BC. It consists of three concentric circles, of ditch and rampart , 850 feet above sea level . It is said to be one of the most important examples of its kind in the SW ; and some people speak of the legend that it was the place where Cador , Duke of Cornwall and husband of King Arthur's mother, met his untimely death. It has a car park and picnic area.

Mid-summer is celebrated here annually with a hilltop bonfire

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Topics

Vandals ! 14
Ike
Ike
Jun 2003

Sites within 20km of Castle-an-Dinas (St. Columb)

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