Page:VCH Cornwall 1.djvu/473

 STONE CIRCLES trate and covered with furze, is 6 ft. long : this group of large stones is on the north side of the circle. Eleven stones remain altogether, six standing and five fallen, so that this venerable monument presents a rather dilapidated appearance. The stones are of granite, the moor- stone of the immediate neighbourhood, for the circle-builders of Cornwall certainly laboured under few disabilities in the supply of material, though they hardly availed themselves to the full of their advantages. An unusual feature of this circle is the small barrow, 36 ft. in diameter, which stands on the south of it and has overflowed and invaded a portion of the circumference. This is the only example in Cornwall of a barrow so placed, for as a rule they are at a respectful, nay a con- siderable, distance from the circle. A somewhat similar instance is found at Arbor Low in Derbyshire, where a tumulus has been constructed in the bank which surrounds the circle ; this is regarded as a secondary structure and not contemporaneous, and in all probability the barrow at Boskednan is also much later than the circle. J. T. Blight tells us, on the authority of a credible person in the neighbourhood of Penzance, that about fifty years ago labourers opened this barrow and found some urns. 1 W. C. Borlase in 1872 ' caused a trench to be dug across it and the four side-stones of a Kist-Vaen were soon discovered. . . . The cover had been unfortunately removed, and the chamber rifled. Con- tinuing the trench in a westerly direction, the workmen discovered, at a distance of two feet from the Kist-Vaen, a large quantity of burnt wood ; and two feet further still, the fragments of an urn, formed of very coarse clay.' 9 The kist has suffered injury since Mr. Borlase examined it, and only the two side stones remain in situ. Two other cairns are to be seen near by, one 100 yards away north-west, and a large but dilapidated one 200 yards east of the circle. There is an earth-fast stone on the north-west, which looks like the base of a broken menhir, and on Watch Croft, west-north-west, is a menhir 6 ft. 3 in. high. The Men-an-Tol and the Men Scryfa are in sight, but hardly distinguishable on the grey moor, and Mulfra Quoit can be seen on the hill to the eastward (N. 8oE.). The moors here fairly bristle with the relics of a forgotten social order, with huts, barrows, menhirs, hill-castles, cliff-castles, dolmens ; but there is no evidence that any of these remains stood in a definite relation to the circle ; even the barrow touching the ring gives the impres- sion, after examination on the spot, that it is a late intrusion and not part of the original design. Dr. Borlase gives a sketch of this circle, showing nineteen stones in the periphery, thirteen of which are standing and six fallen. 3 Judging by the spacing of the stones that remain the original num- ber would have been twenty-one or two unless we allow for a gap here, as at Boscawen-un and Dawns Men. W. Cotton's plan of 1826 1 'Notes on Stone Circles,' Gent. Mag. (1868), pt. i. pp. 308-19. ! Ntfnia Cornubiif, 281. 3 Ant. of Corntv., pi. xiii. 387