Quoits
The Quoits of Penwith
Lower down this page: Purpose of Quoits - Location of Quoits - Ravages of Time
Chûn Quoit - pretty much intact
Quoits, elsewhere called cromlechs or dolmens, are mysterious structures. Variations are found across the whole of Eurasia.
They are often described as 'tombs', part-covered by a mound of earth that has somehow eroded away, revealing the stones underneath. This idea is questionable, a leftover from 18th and 19th Century antiquarians who could not help but see burial tombs in quoits and chambered cairns, and it remains a prevailing idea.
Antiquarians interpreted the presence of a few bones or an urn of ashes to mean 'burial' when it is likely they signify shamanistic practices connected with tribal ancestors or a quest for inner connection with the timeless realm. Bones and ashes symbolise impermanence and 'the beyond'.
It is unlikely that the quoits were covered with earth since none are half-eroded and there is little sign of where the eroded materials went to. There are theories about farmers removing the soil, but this could involve fitting the evidence around a theory. Chambered cairns and tumuli don't generally erode like that, so why should quoits?
They were most probably built more or less as they look today, when intact. However, many are built on top of or close to a slight mound, and this is where this idea started.
Looking inside Chûn Quoit
If quoits were mostly buried in soil, they would need stonework to fill the gaps between the vertical stones to stop the soil falling inwards, and there is little sign of such stonework.
Quoits are often linked with funerary rites - something that is probably only half-true. Sky-burials on top of the capstone and other death rituals might have taken place, but this probably wasn't the primary purpose of quoits. In a sky-burial, a corpse is left to scavenging birds to pick apart. Raptors and crows might have been seen as sacred birds or protectors worthy of offerings.
But there is more.
Mulfra Quoit, with fallen capstone
Energy-Chambers
Quoits have a large, heavy capstone placed on top of several vertical stones (orthostats), usually with a gap at one end of the enclosed chamber, and a solid blocking stone at the other end from the main gap.
Many dowsers see quoits and dolmens as earth-energy devices whereby an up-welling vortical energy-stream from a blind spring or water dome deep in the earth is capped. This is then bent to the horizontal and sent out across the land in a specific direction.
Alternatively an energy-line in the landscape is captured by the quoit, sending its flow downwards, perhaps to fertilise or energise the earth, or to ground the energy-stream, for earth-acupuncture reasons, or simply to terminate the energy-line there.
Here we are talking about subtle energy, channelling, containing and enhancing it. The suggestion is that this is the primary raison d'etre for the building of quoits. The spaces inside them were likely used as repositories for items or people needing charging up or treating with intense subtle energy - tinctures, psychoactive drugs, tools, sacred objects, sick patients or neophytes in training.
Mulfra Quoit, with St Michael's Mount and Cudden Point behind
This energy-exchange between subterranean and surface realms can alternate upwards and downwards with the seasons or the phases and cycles of the moon.
Quoits and dolmens, though they precede the standing stones and stone circles by more than a millennium, are from an engineering viewpoint the most advanced ancient remains of the whole megalithic period in Cornwall.
Lanyon Quoit
It is not clear how much they were built for people to spend time inside, or how much they served as repositories.
With scanty archaeological evidence, it is important to entertain a range of interpretative options, and quoits present a classic case. Quoits would not have needed to be as high as they are for burial purposes, and the size of their capstones suggests a function that is different from the roofing capstones on chambered cairns.
Meanwhile, in chambered cairns, the interior stonework fits together to seal the chamber, while in quoits such tight fits are not visible - suggesting that quoits were built not for earth to be piled up on but to be left open. Quoits do not look as if they are made to be covered.
The Location of Quoits
In Penwith, quoits exist in the northern upland half of the peninsula, with Grumbla Quoit - not conclusively identified as a quoit - placed a distance away from the others.
All quoits are mutually linked by three-point alignments involving two quoits and one extra site, often of similar age. Many of these alignments are astronomically oriented.
Some quoits have a visible locational relationship with nearby tors or hills - St Michael's Mount is noticeable from Mulfra Quoit, Carn Kenidjack from Chûn Quoit and Carn Galva from Lanyon Quoit.
Meanwhile other quoits do not have the same relationship with tors or hills - Zennor and Sperris Quoits on Zennor Hill have no dramatic panoramas, and Bosporthennis and Grumbla Quoits sit on slopes under prominent hills (Carn Galva and Bartinney Castle, respectively), the hills not being visible from the quoit.
Some quoits are located in odd, non-obvious places. Chûn Quoit is on the side of a hill below Chûn Castle. Zennor, Sperris, West Lanyon and Bosporthennis Quoits are hidden away in places that would not strike an observer as blatantly obvious. Mulfra and Lanyon Quoits have fine vistas and well-placed locations though. Zennor and Sperris Quoits were situated on a plateau that was home to quite a few people, and far less bleak than today. The reason they are so located is that they sit on top of energy-vortices from blind springs.
Lanyon Quoit, judging by the major backbone alignments going through it, is geomantically a key site in Penwith, a node for three major backbone alignments. By dint of its location and backbone alignments, it stands in a class of its own amongst quoits. Its precise location is defined by these alignments, accurate to within but yards of distance. The other quoits seem not to share such characteristics.
Ravages of Time
Some sites labelled as quoits are not conclusively so - being ruined, it's difficult to tell. These include Grumbla Quoit and Giant's Grave. (The name 'Grumbla' means 'dolmen'. Today it is an unremarkable ruined pile of stones.) Judging by their seeming lack of alignment connection with the other quoits, Grumbla Quoit and Giant's Grave might have been something else.
Other damaged quoits such as Bosporthennis, Sperris and West Lanyon Quoits are linked to other quoits by quoit alignments, which verifies them as quoits. Possibly quoit alignments represent a trial run in building a complete geomantic system - at the time, the area where quoits were located was the main occupied area of Penwith.
Zennor Quoit
Most quoits are nowadays ruined or altered except for Chûn Quoit. Mulfra and Zennor Quoits are well worth visiting, only partially ruined, though the others are sadly poor reflections of their former selves, nowadays a bewilderingly unimpressive rock-pile.
It is possible that, except in the case of Chûn Quoit and perhaps others now too ruined to tell, some quoits have been intentionally decommissioned. The capstone was lifted off, leaned on the side, and one vertical stone was removed - presumably to make re-erection more complex.
Zennor Quoit
This looks deliberate - otherwise, the capstone might have been taken away, broken up, or chucked somewhere else. If quoits indeed were decommissioned, perhaps the removed vertical stone was taken away to make sure that anyone rebuilding the quoit knew exactly what they were doing, to restore the power of the energy-chamber. Presumably the people who decommissioned them saw them as unwise to be left unattended or uncared for, as the heart and soul of the megalithic period waned away.
Lanyon Quoit was inaccurately reconstructed in recent times by a zealous antiquarian, Captain Giddy, in 1824, after it had been felled in a violent storm. Apparently the capstone fell off in the storm, shattering one or two of the uprights. The quoit no longer resembles its original height, design and proportions, though it is accessible to visitors and the location is still alive.
The sad remains of Sperris Quoit - Zennor Quoit is in the far distance
Impressive in their engineering, the quoits were built in the mid-3000s BCE. Cremated bones found at Sperris Quoit have been dated to 3600-3300 and at Zennor Quoit to 3300-3000 BCE. Both are near each other and aligned exactly with Lanyon Quoit. This is the only case where three quoits are aligned.
This dating, based on artefacts and deposits found in and around the quoits, dates these depositions, not the quoits themselves. The quoits are likely all to have been built within one or two generations around the 3700s-3500s, as one big project.
West Lanyon Quoit, ruined
West Lanyon Quoit, just a ruined pile, is like nearby Lanyon Quoit, a node for multiple alignments. Lanyon Quoit has a lot of long-distance backbone alignments, whereas West Lanyon has many local alignments extending within the Penwith highlands. They seem to act as a pair or polarity, built perhaps at or around the same time.
The quoit question remains open, unhelped by the quoits' ruined state. Yet alignment geomancy gives more clues. For more on quoit alignments, click here.
So the suggestion here is that quoits were built for energy-enhancing purposes, sitting on top of blind springs to cap or entrain them. There will have been a purpose to this that Neolithic people reckoned to be important, since they went to great lengths to build quoits in the form and size that they did. Their use as repositories is plausible. It is possible they served as funerary devices, but this is inconclusive and it might be a secondary purpose.
The quoits are impressive and well worth a visit. They are energetic places. The best quoits to visit are Chûn (fully intact), Lanyon (easily accessible) and Mulfra Quoit (quite intact and well placed). When you go, stay there a while and hang out - let the feeling of the place seep in.
Quoits
Neolithic quoits (cromlechs or dolmens), built in the mid-3000s BCE.
BOSPORTHENNIS Small Neolithic quoit or large cist, damaged. SW 4356 3654. 50.173271 -5.5927983.
CHÛN Quoit, intact and well preserved. Clearly related to Chûn Castle, another Neolithic site. SW 4023 3396. 50.1486 -5.63771.
LANYON Lanyon
Quoit, with two nearby cairns, one a Neolithic longbarrow. Quoit was
incorrectly restored over a century ago by a Capt Giddy after damage by a
storm. Accessible from the road (not wheelchairs). SW 4298 3369.
50.147438 -5.59898.
MULFRA Damaged
or deliberately decommissioned quoit, with a panoramic location with St
Michael's Mount prominent. Worth visiting. SW 4518 3536. 50.163378
-5.569367.
SPERRIS Damaged quoit, difficult to find. Paired with neighbouring Zennor Quoit. SW 4709 3826. 50.190227 -5.544605.
WEST LANYON Damaged
quoit. According to tradition, covered with an earthen barrow, removed
in 1803 to reveal a chamber containing a broken urn, ashes and some
human bones. SW 4231 3378. 50.14798 -5.60837.
ZENNOR Damaged or decommissioned quoit, still reasonably intact and worth a visit. SW 4688 3802. 50.187984 -5.547368.
See also Giant's Grave and Grumbla Cromlech in Queried Sites list below.
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