"Car" or "Caer" in Cornish is a place name from the Celtic "ker" meaning fort. You will also find Caer place names in Wales. In Brittany they use the spelling "Ker"
Caer Dane has no public access but you can get a reasonable view from the road that leads from Perranzabuloe to the fantastically named vilage of Ventongimps.
The small fort sits nicely on the hilltop and is covered with trees in the distance you can also see the larger wooded site of Caer Kief.
"In the commons belonging to the town of Lambourn, is a Barrow, called Creeg Mear, the Great Burrow, which one Christopher Michell digging into some years since, whilst I lived at Lambrigan, in hopes to find stones for an
adjoining hedge of his, came to an hollow place (as usual in such), and found nine urns full of ashes ; which, being disappointed of what he sought for, for the barrow was all of earth, except three or four rough stones which formed
the hollow, he brutally broke immediately to pieces ; and when I expostulated with him about it, and told him I would have paid him his charges, his reply was, that whenever he met with any more, he would bring them to me,
but these were a parcel of old pitchers good for nothing.
That these were Danish, I believe there is no doubt. [They were British, as appears at once, from the Kist Vaen discovered within, and from the hinted badness of the pottery. But they were] I suppose, the ashes of some chief commanders slain in battle, (for which the place is very fit, it being a large open down) from the great number of them. [One barrow cannot mark a battle.] And on a small hill just under this barrow, [and, as under the barrow, bearing probably no relation to it], is a Danish encampment, called Castle Caer Dane, vulgo Castle Caer Don, i. e. the Danes' Camp, consisting of three intrenchments finished, and another begun with an intent to surround
the inner three, but not completed."
CS Gilbert 'Parochial History of Cornwall'Vol III 1838
Not quite sure where the barrow was/is, hence putting this under Caer Dane.
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Posted by Mr Hamhead
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