GULVAL 4

I found this 1 metre (3’3”) four sided stone in 1988 set firmly into the earth amid moorland just east of the rough track to Bosporthennis and about 16 metres (50’) from the nearest hedge to the south.

What purpose it had is quite unknown but it is in an area of intense prehistoric activity and just might be a small standing stone. The moors here are full of small erect stones – some are relatively modern rectangular estate boundary markers with incised letters; others are rough granite parish boundary stones also with incised letters of the relevant parish; yet others, as this stone, have no obvious purpose.

GULVAL 5

MADRON 3

Yet another single survivor of a former possible pair of standing stones, this wedge-shaped 1.95 metre (6’6”) high supposed menhir stands 53 metres from the previous location of its partner in a north-north-east to south-south-west alignment, and some 62 metres north of Trewern Iron Age Round.

Halliwell first recorded* the pair of stones during his rambles in 1861 and wrote how they “appear too large to have been erected originally for rubbing posts”, although Richard Edmonds, writing some 13 years earlier,* had mentioned that the Round had had the choicest stones removed to rebuild the bridge at Newbridge during the 1840s; he made no mention of any standing stones.

Perhaps these stones were, after all, a pair of cattle rubbing posts erected after the plundering of the Round (although not put in the centre of fields) and, as such, I have moved this stone to the queried section although this must be problematical.

In 1870 a “two-stone monument on the tenement of Trewern or Truen” was noted* and some four decades later Henderson saw both stones and made a drawing. He wrote* that two large door jambs, six and four feet tall (1.8 and 1.2m), were still in place on either side of the southern entrance to the Round and that there were “two fine menhirs in fields to west of Round both 6 feet high”(1.8m). As late as 1956 Russell saw* the pair of stones but five years later, during another visit, only a single specimen remained.

MADRON 8

Halliwell recorded* this 1.75 metre (5’9”) tall stone as being used for a cattle rubbing post in 1861 but, although standing in 1956, by January 1961 Russell recorded* this stone as having gone; the farmer denied it had ever existed! She thought it might be incorporated as a grounder stone built horizontally into a new section of rebuilt hedge on the north-west side, near the eastern corner of TA928 – no reference number was given.

MADRON 9

In a list of antiquities Blight recorded* a sepulchral or monumental stone at Boswarthen (Madron) and the Victoria County History later recorded* a stone here as being 2.48 metres (8’) in height. Charles Henderson noted* the base of what was apparently once a fine menhir of great breadth, being triangular in section and reaching a height of 4 feet 10 inches. An OS survey in 1960 recorded* a stone 1.3 metres (4’4”) high having “a fairly clean break across the top” with the shape of the stump suggesting a former standing stone – a grid reference of 4427/3301 was given. But the grid reference given by Russell (see above) differs slightly from this and it appears that the OS refers to a large earthfast boulder “whose dimensions do not appear to agree with the size of the stump recorded in the 1960 survey”.

Russell failed to discover any such stone as had been noted by Henderson and thought that it had been in a hedge.* When this hedge was removed during the 1980’s a large stone was found buried under the ground; it measured 3.1 metres in length and 2.17 in width (10’ by 7’).* Whether it was this unearthed stone or the existing stump which was the menhir noted by Blight remains a mystery. The ‘stump’ has consequently been placed in the queried section.

MADRON 10

John Rogers, Canon of Exeter from 1820 to 1856, lived at Penrose near Helston although the family held lands in West Penwith. Rogers spent many hours as a teenager recording various antiquities and mentioned a fallen stone, some fifteen feet (4.65 metres) in length, lying a little below Mulfra Quoit.*  Whether this was a fallen menhir or a natural rock is unclear. Russell listed the stone as extant and wrote in her notes* that she saw the stone in December 1963 about 46 metres south of the quoit, remarking that it was more likely to be “country than a fallen menhir”.

Blight, in his description of the quoit during the 1860s,* made no mention of any standing stone, fallen or erect, although Dr.Borlase had earlier noted* a “great many erect stones” as the hill is ascended from Mulfra, many of which had been carried off to construct houses and hedges; he thought them probably the remains of dwellings and there are still remnants of courtyard houses in the area.

When I looked for this stone in March 1997 I could not see anything remotely like a fallen menhir although the hillside is still covered with stones of all shapes and sizes, some of which show evidence of having been drilled and split – perhaps Rogers’ stone suffered this fate?

MADRON 11

A possible unrecorded menhir was discovered in 1996 by two visiting walkers, both readers of Meyn Mamvro local earth mysteries magazine, standing in a hedge on the western side of a sunken lane near Greenburrow engine house (Ding Dong) adjacent to a field containing a South West Water small covered reservoir. The 1.8 metre (6’) high stone was described as “tall, beautifully smoothed oval stone” having no evidence that it was ever used as a gatepost (i.e. no drill marks to take hinges or near a former field opening). Other “interesting” stones were noted in the next field.*

This track previously delineated the boundaries between Boskednan and Bosiliack tenements, as well as being part of the old parish boundary between Gulval and Madron. It might also be part of an ancient route from Bosigran Iron Age ‘cliff castle’ towards the Mount’s Bay area.

The Lanhydrock Atlas of 1696 marks of ‘a great stone’ well to the west of a field named as Gwelamennar [see Gulval F4]. This stone formed one of the estate boundary markers and cannot relate to Carfury Menhir (GULVAL 1) that is located to the southwest of LA80. Since the area where the stone now stands in a hedge was probably open moorland at the time when the Atlas was made and, incidentally lay on the old parish border of Gulval and Madron, it would appear that this documentation confirms this ‘great stone’ as a prehistoric menhir.