Megalithic Constellations - Ancient Penwith | Cornwall

Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of West Penwith, the Land's End peninsula, Cornwall
Ancient Penwith
Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of the Land's End Peninsula
Ancient Penwith
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Megalithic Constellations

Stone Circle Complexes

Complexes are as important as stone circles themselves. They orbit around the gravity-centre of the stone circles, and they differ from each other in shape and character. Complexes are made up of arrays of menhirs, cairns and other features surrounding stone circles, within a mile or two, often in view though nowadays often obscured by hedges or obstructions.


  • The Merry Maidens complex is very definite, quite localised, following a WSW-ENE axis, with a wide range of features - menhirs, cairns and crosses.
  • The Tregeseal complex has a similar orientation, but nowadays it is in a poor state - mainly eroded cairns. It is dominated by a granite tor, Carn Kenidjack.
  • The Nine Maidens (Boskednan) complex is made up of eroded and overgrown cairns, but this circle, with its former sister circle the Mên an Tol, creates an array of sites - cairns and standing stones - designed with terrestrial more than astronomical interests in mind. It's dominated by a tor, a hill and a wide-open panorama.
  • Around Boscawen-ûn a constellation of menhirs was originally visible from the circle, some astronomically aligned, and quite evenly spread around the stone circle. There is a hill, Chapel Carn Brea, in the middle background.

Of the four, only Boscawen-ûn was a single circle. The others had two stone circles.
The Merry Maidens complex (click for larger version)
The Merry Maidens complexMerry Maidens complex

This once comprised two stone circles, a stone setting, a number of menhirs and a number of cairns, plus some Christian crosses added later.

It is arrayed mainly along a WSW-ENE axis highlighted by the main yellow alignment passing through it (see map right). This alignment leads from Carn Brea through St Michael's Mount to Treryn Dinas - a major backbone alignment. It has an azimuth of 54.3° - the rising point of the sun around early June and mid-July. It's unclear whether this was astronomically oriented or terrestrially aligned.

A sub-axis in the complex follows a short internal alignment from the menhir Gûn Rith through the centre of the Merry Maidens, then through a now-fallen menhir and a hedge menhir to the now-disappeared Tregurnow stone circle, with an azimuth of 81.1°. It's blue on the map above.

In the northeast of the complex, the Pipers menhirs act as a pair. The SW Piper seems to handle alignments within the complex (blue on the map), while the NE Piper takes alignments from further away. An example is an alignment from Tregurnow stone circle through the NE Piper to Boscawen-un, ending up at Bartinney Castle.
NE Piper menhir
NE Pipers menhirThe Pipers are counterweighted on the other side of the Merry Maidens by the twin Boscawen Rôs menhirs. The western menhir is aligned with the centre of the Merry Maidens and the Pipers. The eastern menhir aligns with the SE edge of the stone circle and the Pipers. The headscratcher is, why?

A comprehensive multi-discliplinary survey of the complex is needed. It is affected by the road and hedgerows in the vicinity when, in the complex's heyday, it might have been landscaped parkland with visual characteristics that we cannot imagine and a clearer horizon than today, without hedgerows, overhead wires and telegraph poles.

Notable are a number of holed stones (pink on the map above). The best estimate is that these were accurately aligned to obtain exact readings for certain astronomical phenomena. The holes are not large. It is possible that this concerned observation of a rising star or planet rather than the sun or moon: a narrow series of aligned holes would counteract extinction, when stars disappear while close to the horizon because their light is insufficient to get through the earth's atmosphere when low on the horizon. A line of tightly-aligned holed stones could exploit the virtues of the slight atmospheric magnification that stellar objects have when they are close to the horizon. This might have been an Early Bronze Age precision instrument.

Alignment 123 from the Merry Maidens goes to Carn Lês Boel, then to Knackyboy cairn on the Scilly island of St Martin's, then to a kerbed cairn on Gweal Hill, Bryher. Another interesting alignment went from Tregurnow stone circle to Sancreed Beacon, through Botrea Barrows to Pendeen Watch, a significant cliff sanctuary.
The Boscawen-ûn complex (click for a larger version)
Boscawen-un complexBoscawen-ûn complex

This complex is more spread out and radial than the Merry Maidens complex, with a gaggle of menhirs 600-800m away from the stone circle, and more further away still.

Boscawen-ûn is more of a hub than any other stone circle in Penwith: it stands at the centre of the southern half of the peninsula, with radial alignments to several of the major cliff sanctuaries - Carn Lês Boel, Treryn Dinas, Cape Cornwall, Gurnard's Head, Maen Castle and St Michael's Mount. Their relative angles need analysis.

It's a stone circle where you can spend time alone, because it is a little tricky to find. Boscawen-ûn is fondly regarded by many.
Boscawen-ûn
Boscawen-unSome argue that the stone near the centre of the circle leans accidentally, but this is incorrect. Although such a stone is unusual, it is intentionally inclined.

The power centre of the circle lies directly under the tip of the stone, not at its base. You can stand on this vortex if you stand with your head under the tip of the stone - you might find yourself involuntarily swaying.

It feels as if this stone has national significance. It points up the peninsula of the SW of Britain at an azimuth of 53°, in the local-horizon direction of the summer solstice sunrise. It's as if it stakes down the national energy-field of Britain at one of its corners (perhaps with the Ring of Brogar in the Orkney Islands at the other end).

Boscawen-ûn was known in the Welsh Triads as one of the three chief Druid gorsedds or eisteddfod sites of south Britain (the other two being at Caerleon and Old Sarum).

Much more study is needed of the various orientations of Boscawen-ûn's surrounding menhirs, and of their original intervisibility in the days before today's agricultural landscape arrived. Notable also is the orientation of Chapel Carn Brea, visible WNW, together with a gap or entrance in the circle of stones that opens to the hill.
Creeg Tol
Creeg Tol, Boscawen-unThe rock outcrop 150m to Boscawen-ûn's northwest, Creeg Tol, is quite energetic, providing a panorama of the circle - it lies on the above-mentioned alignment from Tregurnow to Boscawen-ûn and then to Bartinney Castle. Both Bartinney and Chapel Carn Brea were hilltop beacon and ceremonial sites, visible from the Scillies.

Boscawen-ûn hosts a number of rock carvings on its central stone (not usually visible), representing two axe-heads or feet, and another higher up. This is important since carvings on menhirs and stone circles are rare.

The alignment of the elliptical shape of the circle to the lunar maxima and of the near-central stone to the summer solstice rising point indicates an intentional marrying of the solar and lunar calendars, and a positioning and shaping of the circle to integrate these into its structure.
The Tregeseal complex (click for a larger version)
Map of the Tregeseal stone circle complexTregeseal complex

This complex is different, though it has parallels to the Merry Maidens complex - its long axis runs roughly WSW-ENE. It is linked by backbone alignment to Carn Brea (not to be confused with Chapel Carn Brea) and it had two stone circles, several cairns and at least four holed stones in former times.

It is different since Tregeseal is dominated and cradled by Carn Kenidjack, and its main peripheral features are cairns and tumuli, not menhirs. Just to the SSE of the surviving circle is Carn Vres, a rock outcrop with a spring, not usually recognised as an active part of the site but quite energetic, and a viewpoint overlooking the circles and counterweighting them in relation to Carn Kenidjack, the Hooting Tor.

The holed stones, a few hundred yards from the circle, were presumably oriented stones (they had fallen down and were re-erected by a farmer), pointing at or towards the more distant Boswens menhir, or toward points on the Isles of Scilly. The holes were mostly quite small (3in or 8cm). It's difficult to know what they were there for.
Tregeseal. The destroyed circle was in the ploughed field to the right
Tregeseal stone circleInside the existing stone circle six intersecting underground streams meet (at different levels) and natural background radiation inside the circle is significantly lower than outside it.

A number of chambered or cist-containing cairns lie to the ENE of the circle, mostly in a poor state. One is kerbed and another has a distinct stone chamber. A processional route probably went from the stone circle to the cairns and the holed stones, then turning up the hill to Carn Kenidjack.

Another chambered cairn is SW of the stone circle - recently cleaned up.

Menhirs are not part of this complex, except for Boswens menhir, distantly visible up on the hill to the ENE. It is connected by alignment to the SW chambered cairn, the surviving circle and West Lanyon Quoit.

Carn KenidjackThe main feature of the complex is Carn Kenidjack, the Hooting Tor. It is a hauntingly mysterious tor, used as a sacred tor hill in Neolithic times. Two natural simulacra (rocks looking like beings) are on the carn (see right and below).

Carn Kenidjack hovers over Tregeseal, holding the circle in its lap. An alignment runs from Carn Kenidjack, through the now-destroyed western circle to a cairn close to Carn Lês Boel many miles away.

Carn KenidjackA leaflet by CASPN tells of the folkloric tales of the area:

This area is rich with legends of the Otherworld: fairy folk, demons and devils. One story tells of how a local miner chanced upon a Fairy Feast at the circle and was bound in gossamer thread and left there all night; another tells of an encounter with the Devil himself on Carn Kenidjack, which dominates the horizon from the circle; and yet another tells of Pee Tregear who was piskey-led here and encountered the little folk. All these stories may be memories of the ancestors and spirits of the dead, for this whole area was formerly covered with prehistoric barrows, burial mounds and megalithic monuments.
The Nine Maidens complex (click for a larger version)
Map of the Nine Maidens stone circle complexNine Maidens complex

The Nine Maidens are on a rounded ridge passing south from Carn Galva, and overshadowed by it. From the circle Carn Galva looks like a rounded pyramid. Carn Galva was originally, in the Neolithic, a tor rising up out of the trees and a central place in the peninsula. During the Bronze Age woodland clearance denuded the ridge on which the Nine Maidens stand, clearing the space for the stone circle.

The ridge would have been sweeter and less bleak and peaty in the Bronze Age than it is now, during a warmer and more equable time. It was  also unaffected by later tin-mining in the area.

There are probably far more cairns and barrows than now are visible in the tufty heather. Close-in, the complex follows the ridge from a large kerbed cairn to the south to the stone circle itself, then to a standing stone near it (now only a stub) and then, further still, to the large, kerbed Boskednan Cairn.

Around the circle is a group of barrows which, although robbed, nevertheless have a strong feeling. Following the track down toward Mên an Tol, there is the felled Four Parishes stone, an ancient parish boundary marker rather like a menhir.
Mên Scryfa from the Nine Maidens (telephoto shot)
Men ScryfaFurther down is Mên Scryfa, a rare inscribed stone taken to be from the Romano-British period but likely a menhir that was later carved on. Then came Mên an Tol, formerly a stone circle now reduced in shape and form. Its current format was set in Victorian times by a zealous antiquarian. The two circles complemented each other.

Overlooking the whole area is Carn Galva, the 'magic mountain' of Penwith, even though the neighbouring hill, Watch Croft, is actually the highest. It's an example of the way that earth energy and the bold shape of Carn Galva can modify our perception. Carn Galva is a Neolithic tor hill.
Watch Croft from Mên Scryfa. Right, a trig point, left, the menhir
Watch CroftWatch Croft has one or two barrows on its summit. A little way down the hill is a menhir in a seemingly inconspicuous place. It's natural to wonder why it is there. However, as seen from just below the Nine Maidens, close to Mên Scryfa, it stands out on the horizon - a 'false horizon'. Why this should be, we do not know, but it is clearly intentional.

A Lament

It is regrettable that more of the stone circles are not alive and present in the Penwith landscape today. We know little about the disappeared circles. Even today there are ongoing battles to keep the existing circles in good health, with threats from mobile phone masts, cattle grazing, detectorists and inappropriate English Nature land management policies.
Carn Galva from the Nine Maidens
Nine Maidens and Carn GalvaSad to say, even the authorities cannot fully be relied on to understand or protect Penwith's ancient sites, easily tempted as they are by financial and vested interests, and having zero understanding of megalithic subtle-energy technologies. Phone masts are more profitable.

These are not just historic monuments. They are sacred technological devices with a value and significance that is gradually becoming more visible as our ideas change in the 21st Century. Stone circles and other megalithic sites give clues as to how this might be done. Now that's a thought.

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