The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Fieldnotes by SeanT

Latest Posts

Rocky Valley Rock Carvings

The carvings are pretty definitely less than 300 years old: they've been carved onto a quarried rock face by a metal chisel. BUT don't admire them any the less for that. They are delicately carved, obviously by a talented individual, who was not only a craftsman but also literate as well since they most closely resemble carvings on the Hollywood Stone in County Wicklow, Ireland, dating from the Early Bronze Age. It is pretty unlikely that an eighteenth or nineteenth century miller from Bossiney had visited the place himself so he must have seen pictures of these or similar prehistoric Greek carvings. Either that or his imagination was as impressive as his technical skills.

Stannon (Stone Circle)

You're looking at a landscape trashed by people in prehistory: the clay works are just an extension of that and when they're closed there'll be one more wild and exotic place on the moor. Turn your back on the works and you are alone.
The last phase of rescue archaeology on the works site excavated a couple of ring cairns and a reave-type boundary. The best feature however was a small unremarkable stony cairn that turned out to have a long stony tail made up of two or three large orthostats with smaller stones in between. If you stood at the end of the tail and looked beyond the cairn you were staring straight into the jaws of Rough Tor. Apparently a number of similar cairns were excavated before previous works expansions and all bar one had tails pointing to the same dominant feature.
SeanT hasn't added a profile


My TMA Content: