More than a Dozen Mysterious Prehistoric Tunnels in Cornwall, England, Mystify Researchers

Ancient Origins

More than a dozen tunnels have been found in Cornwall, England, that are unique in the British Isles. No one knows why Iron Age people created them. The fact that the ancients supported their tops and sides with stone, suggests that they wanted them to endure, and that they have, for about 2,400 years.

Many of the fogous, as they’re called in Cornish after their word for cave, ogo, were excavated by antiquarians who didn’t keep records, so their purpose is hard to fathom, says a BBC Travel story on the mysterious structures.

The landscape of Cornwall is covered with hundreds of ancient, stone, man-made features, including enclosures, cliff castles, roundhouses, ramparts and forts. In terms of stone monuments, the Cornwall countryside has barrows, menhirs, dolmens, cairns and of course stone circles. In addition, there are 13 inscribed stones.

The Cornish landscape is dotted with ancient megalithic structures like this Lanyon Quoit Megalith   ( public domain )

“Obviously, all of this monument building did not take place at the same time. Man has been leaving his mark on the surface of the planet for thousands of years and each civilisation has had its own method of honouring their dead and/or their deities,” says the site Cornwall in Focus.

The site says Cornwall has 74 Bronze Age structures, 80 from the Iron Age, 55 from the Neolithic and one from the Mesolithic. In addition, there are nine Roman sites and 24 post-Roman. The Mesolithic dates from 8000 to 4500 BC, so people have been occupying this southwestern peninsula of Britain for a long, long time.

About 150 generations of people worked the land there. But it’s believed the fogous date to the Iron Age, which lasted from about 700 BC to 43 AD. Though they’re unique, the fogou tunnels of Cornwall are similar to souterrains in Scotland, Ireland, Normandy and Brittany, says the BBC.

Carn Euny fogou in Cornwall ( public domain )

The fogous required considerable investment of time and resources “and no one knows why they would have done so,” says the BBC. It’s interesting to note that all 14 of the fogous have been found within the confines of prehistoric settlements.

Because the society was preliterate, there are no written records that explain the enigmatic structures.

“There are only a couple that have been excavated in modern times – and they don’t seem to be structures that really easily give up their secrets,” Susan Greaney, head properties historian of English Heritage, told the BBC.

The mystery of their construction is amplified at Halliggye Fogou, the best-preserved such tunnel in Cornwall. It measures 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) high. The 8.4 -meter-long (27.6 feet) passage narrows at its end in a tunnel 4 meters (13.124 feet) long and .75 meter (2.46 feet) tall.

Main chamber of the Halliggye Fogou ( public domain )

Another tunnel 27 meters (88.6 feet) long branches off to the left of the main chamber and gets darker the farther in one goes. There is what the BBC calls a “final creep” at the end of this passage that has stone lip upon which one could trip.

“In other words, none of it seemed designed for easy access – a characteristic that’s as emblematic of fogous as it is perplexing,” wrote the BBC’s Amanda Ruggeri.

Halliggye Fogou. One of the largest and best preserved of these fogou (curious underground passages) this one originally passed under the rampart of a defended Iron Age settlement.                   ( geograph.org.uk)

Some have speculated they were places to hide, though the lintels of many of them are visible on the surface and Ruggeri says they would be forbidding places to stay if one sought refuge.

Still others have speculated they were burial chambers. An antiquarian who entered Halliggye in 1803 wrote that it had funerary urns. But others entered by the hole he made in the roof, and all the urns are gone. No bones or ashes have been discovered in the six tunnels that modern archaeologists have examined. No remnants of grains have been found, perhaps because the soil is acidic. No ingots from mining have been discovered.

This elimination of storage, mining or burial purposes has led some to speculate that they were perhaps ceremonial or religious structures where people worshiped gods. “These were lost religions,” said archaeologist James Gossip, who led Ruggeri on a tour of Halligye fogou.

“We don’t know what people were worshiping. There’s no reason they couldn’t have had a ceremonial, spiritual purpose as well as, say, storage.”

He added that the purpose and use of the fogous probably changed over the hundreds of years they were in use.

Top image: The Halliggye Fogou ( megalithics.com)

By Mark Miller

Archaeologists Discover Ancient British Stones Have Secret Markings Visible Only at Night

Ancient Origins

A new study suggests that Stonehenge and other ancient stone memorials could have been used for sacred moonlit ceremonies which took place late at night. The archaeologists taking part in this study have come to this conclusion, after finding that some mysterious messages are visible only at night.

 The Peculiarity of Hendraburnick Quoit
Until recently, Neolithic structures were thought to be exclusively connected with the movements of the sun, with the immense Wiltshire circle of Stonehenge being the ultimate example, as the specific monument lines up perfectly with the summer solstice. However, a new archaeological study implies that the Neolithic monument was used differently than most structures of its kind. As The Telegraph reports, the new examination of the Stone Age engraved panel Hendraburnick Quoit in Cornwall by Dr. Andy Jones – who has been working in conjunction with the Cornwall Archaeological Unit – showed ten times as many markings on the engraved panel when viewed in moonlight or very low sunlight from the south east.

Marks on the rock came into view under a camera flash and would have lit up in moonlight Credit: Dr Andy Jones

 For those who might not be aware of the specific monument, keep in mind that Hendraburnick “Quoit” is in fact a misnomer. In reality is not a quoit at all, but an impressive and picturesque propped stone, lying upon a gently rolling valley-side in Cornwall. It is an exciting site, and aside from being a testament to the power of prehistoric people to shift these enormous stones, it also highlights many ancient engravings known as cup-marks, which involve the hollowing out of rounded dimples in the rock.

Hendraburnick Quoit (CC BY SA 2.0)

Special “Effects” under the Moonlight
 Interestingly, archaeologists also noticed that at some point in history, people who probably occupied the location near the site smashed up many pieces of quartz around the area which would have radiated light in the dark, thereby giving a unique and impressive effect during the night.

Dr. Jones claims that this unique phenomenon didn’t take place at the Hendraburnick Quoit exclusively, but instead it has also been traced in a few other ancient stone monuments such as Stonehenge for example. He told The Telegraph, “I think the new marks show that this site was used at night and it is likely that other megalithic sites were as well. We were aware there were some cup and ring marks on the rocks but we were there on a sunny afternoon and noticed it was casting shadows on others which nobody had seen before. When we went out to do some imaging at night, when the camera flashed we suddenly saw more and more art, which suggested that it was meant to be seen at night and in the moonlight.”

llustration of the marks found on the rock Credit: Thomas Goskar

Sacred Attribute of the Hendraburnick Quoit
Writing in the archaeology journal Time and Mine, Dr. Jones and colleague Thomas Goskar conclude, “As in many cultures where darkness is associated with the supernatural and the heightening of senses, it is possible that some activities at Hendraburnick Quoit may have been undertaken at night. Quartz has luminescent properties and reflects both moonlight and firelight. Given that human eye perceives color and shade quite differently at night than by daylight and the art would have been visible in moonlit conditions, the smashed quartz at Hendraburnick could have been used as part of night time activity on the site in order to ‘release’ the luminescent properties of the quartz around the monument and ‘reveal’ the art in a particular way. After the ritual, the broken pieces, once they had fallen on the ground, could have effectively formed a wider platform or arc which would have continued to glisten around it in the moonlight, and thereby added to the ‘aura’ of the site.”

Next step for archaeologists is to discover what exactly happened during these special ceremonies under the moonlight. The new research was published in the archaeology journal Time and Mind.

Top image: Lanyon Quoit. Used as the overriding image of ancient Cornwall and also known as the Giant's Table. (CC BY SA 2.0)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Hidden Fourth Circle at Mysterious 4,000-Year-Old Standing Stones in Cornwall to be Investigated

Ancient Origins

Archaeologists are set to undertake an investigation of a hidden fourth circle identified by geophysics at an ancient megalithic site in Cornwall known as ‘The Hurlers’.

The Plymouth Herald reports that the mystery circle was first identified in the early 1990s but only recently has funding been acquired to undertake an investigation in a project known as ‘Reading the Hurlers’.  Archaeologists from the Cornwall Archaeological Unit, geologists, and volunteers will join together to learn the secrets of the hidden circle.

The Hurlers stone circles (public domain)

The Hurlers are one of Cornwall’s best known prehistoric monuments and are comprised of three stone circles and a pair of standing stones known as The Pipers. The name is derived from a legend that tells of a group of men who were turned to stone for playing the Cornish game of hurling on a Sunday instead of going to church. The two Pipers are said to be the figures of two men who played the pipes during the game and suffered the same fate.

The Hurlers - Stone Circle - Liskeard, Cornwall, UK (public domain)

In 1994, the possible fourth circle was discovered to the north of the Hurlers, apparently on the same alignment. The Reading the Hurlers project site reports that the buried fourth circle “measures approximately 21-23 m in diameter and lies 105m to the north of the northern circle within The Hurlers triple stone circle complex. If, it is found to exist, it may comprise potentially fallen (once standing) or even recumbent (lying) stones and while it has been surveyed.”
According to English Heritage, The Hurlers have a number of significant alignments, both astronomical and to other ceremonial and funerary monuments in the landscape. The axis through the centres of the two northern circles aligns with the massive Rillaton Barrow, a Bronze Age round barrow made famous for the exquisitely crafted gold cup found inside. The axis of the southern pair of circles aligns directly with a prehistoric round cairn to the south-west.

Main: Rillaton Barrow, an ancient burial mound on Bodmin Moor. Inset: The gold cup found inside. (public domain)

With regards to the work about to be undertaken, Reading The Hurlers reports: “We will carefully hand dig the turf and topsoil around each of the stones which have been identified on the circumference of the site and excavate sections of the interior space. An area of approximately 23m² will be opened up. We will be looking to confirm the presence and/or absence of potential stones, any likely related features such as socket holes (the dug holes in which potential standing stones had once stood) and perhaps even levelled “artificial” (made-up) surfaces possibly laid around the stones.  We will look to see if there are large stones which form a possible fourth stone circle and examine each of the stones we uncover to see if, and how, they are placed in relation to one another, whether they make up a circular monument, and if so, whether they have been dressed (worked by hand).”
One theory suggests that the four circles were not all built at once by the same people, but were built by different communities over different time periods within the Early Bronze Age.
Top image: The Hurlers stone circle in Cornwall (public domain)
By April Holloway

Researchers Unearth 6th Century Palace from the Legendary Birthplace of King Arthur

Ancient Origins

Researchers working in Cornwall have unearthed the remains of walls from a palace they believe dates to the 6th century. These walls may share a connection with the legendary King Arthur, as they are located on the site of Tintagel Castle, a dwelling that folklore associates with his birthplace

The Telegraph reports that the uncovered structure was likely the home of powerful and wealthy rulers of the ancient British kingdom of Dumnonia. Evidence supporting this idea comes in the form of approximately 150 fragments of pottery and glassware that hail from various locations mostly from the Mediterranean region. Two artifacts the team has uncovered so far are pieces of an amphora and fragments of a Phoenician red-slip bowl or large dish which was thought to have passed around during ancient feasts.

Ryan Smith (trench supervisor) holding a Phoenician red slip water from Western Turkey. ( Emily Whitfield-Wicks )

The excavations are a part of an English Heritage five-year project that is delving into the mysterious story of the famous Cornwall archaeological site from the 5th-7th centuries. The location is best known for the 13th century Tintagel Castle.

The ruins of the upper mainland courtyards of Tintagel Castle, Cornwall. ( Kerry Garratt/CC BY SA 2.0 )

Some historical texts state that King Arthur was born at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. This king is often remembered from tales involving his sword Excalibur, the knights of the round table , and his teacher/mentor (or possible enemy) Merlin the magician .

More than a Dozen Mysterious Prehistoric Tunnels in Cornwall, England, Mystify Researchers

• Historians Draw Closer to the Tomb of the Legendary King Arthur
• The Grail Cypher: A radical reassessment of Arthurian history

Although many people are enthralled with Arthurian legends, researchers such as Ralph Ellis have argued that :

“The story of King Arthur and his gallant knights that this semi-mythical Walter Kayo eventually crafted is complex, frustrating and fraught with contradictions and impossibilities. In the hands of subsequent Arthurian authors it became a compilation of two histories blended together in such a clumsy manner that it betrays confusion in both its broad outline and finer detail. Very few of the names and events recorded in these chronicles exist in the historical record […]”

Illustration from page 16 of ‘The Boy's King Arthur.’ ( Public Domain )

Thus, the legends behind King Arthur have yet to be fully understood as myth or fact (or a combination of the two).  Moreover, there have also been doubts raised recently about the general perception of his birthplace as well. For example, Graham Phillips seems to believe that the king existed, but that a lot of the legends surrounding his life are wrong, including his place of birth, which Phillips says was Shropshire - not South West England.
Regardless of if it was in fact the site of the legendary king’s birth, Tintagel is seen as one of Europe’s most important archaeological sites.
As the Telegraph says: “The remains of the castle, built in the 1230s and 1240s by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, stand on the site of an early Medieval settlement, where experts believe high-status leaders may have lived and traded with far-off shores, importing exotic goods and trading tin.”

Ruins of the Norman castle at Tintagel. ( CC BY SA 3.0 )

Win Scutt, one of English Heritage’s properties curators, is hopeful that more finds are on the horizon for the well-known site. He told the Telegraph: 

“This is the most significant archaeological project at Tintagel since the 1990s. The three-week dig is the first step in a five year research programme to answer some key questions about Tintagel and Cornwall’s past. The discovery of high-status buildings – potentially a royal palace complex – at Tintagel is transforming our understanding of the site. We’re cutting a small window into the site’s history, to guide wider excavations next year. We’ll also be gathering samples for analysis. It’s when these samples are studied in the laboratory that the fun really starts, and we’ll begin to unearth Tintagel’s secrets.”

Jacky Nowakowski, archaeologist at the Cambridge Archaeology Unit and head of the current excavations, shares Scutt’s hope and excitement about recent and future findings at the site. She said :

"It is a great opportunity to shed new light on a familiar yet infinitely complex site where there is still much to learn and to contribute to active research of a major site of international significance in Cornwall. Our excavations are underway now, and will run both this summer and next, giving visitors the chance to see and hear at first hand new discoveries being made and share in the excitement of the excavations.” 

What further mysteries are waiting to be unravelled at the Tintagel archaeological site in Cornwall?

 

Excavations at Tintagel Castle  ( Emily Whitfield-Wicks )

Top Image: Tintagel Castle archeology dig. Source: Emily Whitfield-Wicks
By Alicia McDermott 

In case you missed it... Top 10 historical Cornish words

History Extra

c1870: the busy fishing port of Newlyn in Penzance, Cornwall. (Photo by Gibson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Cornish, or Kernowek – a descendant of the language spoken by the British population before the Anglo-Saxons arrived – has survived and resisted over the centuries.
In 1549, during the Reformation, the Act of Uniformity decreed that the Book of Common Prayer in English should be used by everyone in place of Latin worship. This proved so unpopular with the speakers of Cornish that there was a massive uprising – the Prayer Book Rebellion. Thousands of rebels died, striking a massive blow to the already dwindling language.
However, Cornish struggled through until the 19th century when – entirely replaced by English – it was declared a dead language. Famously, the last native speaker of Cornish was Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole, who died in 1777.
As Cornish declined and was replaced with English, the two intermingled to develop a rich Cornish dialect of English. This dialect, while English, has elements of Cornish grammar, and lots of Cornish vocabulary.
In the mid-19th century there was a resurgence of interest in the Cornish Language and dialect, despite the fact it had been in decline some years earlier. In an effort to record and preserve it, several scholars wrote grammars, dictionaries and glossaries.
The language preserved in these books shows a Cornwall that is pragmatic and occasionally bawdy; hardworking, and dependent on the landscape.
Cornish still survives today and is now an official minority language, although it is notably stronger in the older generations. There is a growing number of bilingual native speakers, and Cornish-language books and films are being made.
Let’s look back at some notable 19th-century Cornish dialect words:
EGGY-HOT – Hot beer whisked with eggs and sugar, sometimes flavoured with rum.
TIDDLEYWINKS or KIDDLIWINKS – A pub. Innkeepers would keep smuggled brandy hidden from the law in a kettle. Those in the know would then WINK at the kettle when they wanted some. It’s likely that after an evening’s hard winking at the kettle, it didn’t stay secret for long.
VESTRY – When a baby smiles in its sleep.
EAR-BOSOMS – Glands in the neck. When they’re swollen, you say “my ear-bosoms are down”.
POKEMON – Clumsy. Unrelated to the Japanese POKEMON, which is a contraction of Pocket Monsters.
DUMBLEDORE – A thorn or bramble. This word, which also appears in early modern English meaning a bumblebee, inspired JK Rowling.
BOWLDACIOUS – Brazen or impudent, as in “You bowldacious hussy”.
GOD’S COW – A ladybird. Because what is a ladybird if not a tiny, red, holy cow?
AIRYMOUSE – A bat. A more modern Cornish dialect word for bat is LEATHERWING, which is equally lovely.

NESTLE-BIRD, CHOOGY-PIG and PIGGY-WHIDDEN – The smallest and weakest pig in a litter. The number of words for this demonstrates how important animals were in daily life.

More than a Dozen Mysterious Prehistoric Tunnels in Cornwall, England, Mystify Researchers

Ancient Origins

More than a dozen tunnels have been found in Cornwall, England, that are unique in the British Isles. No one knows why Iron Age people created them. The fact that the ancients supported their tops and sides with stone, suggests that they wanted them to endure, and that they have, for about 2,400 years.

Many of the fogous, as they’re called in Cornish after their word for cave, ogo, were excavated by antiquarians who didn’t keep records, so their purpose is hard to fathom, says a BBC Travel story on the mysterious structures.
The landscape of Cornwall is covered with hundreds of ancient, stone, man-made features, including enclosures, cliff castles, roundhouses, ramparts and forts. In terms of stone monuments, the Cornwall countryside has barrows, menhirs, dolmens, cairns and of course stone circles. In addition, there are 13 inscribed stones.

The Cornish landscape is dotted with ancient megalithic structures like this Lanyon Quoit Megalith (public domain)

“Obviously, all of this monument building did not take place at the same time. Man has been leaving his mark on the surface of the planet for thousands of years and each civilisation has had its own method of honouring their dead and/or their deities,” says the site Cornwall in Focus.
The site says Cornwall has 74 Bronze Age structures, 80 from the Iron Age, 55 from the Neolithic and one from the Mesolithic. In addition, there are nine Roman sites and 24 post-Roman. The Mesolithic dates from 8000 to 4500 BC, so people have been occupying this southwestern peninsula of Britain for a long, long time.
About 150 generations of people worked the land there. But it’s believed the fogous date to the Iron Age, which lasted from about 700 BC to 43 AD. Though they’re unique, the fogou tunnels of Cornwall are similar to souterrains in Scotland, Ireland, Normandy and Brittany, says the BBC.

Carn Euny fogou in Cornwall (public domain)

The fogous required considerable investment of time and resources “and no one knows why they would have done so,” says the BBC. It’s interesting to note that all 14 of the fogous have been found within the confines of prehistoric settlements.
Because the society was preliterate, there are no written records that explain the enigmatic structures.
“There are only a couple that have been excavated in modern times – and they don’t seem to be structures that really easily give up their secrets,” Susan Greaney, head properties historian of English Heritage, told the BBC.
The mystery of their construction is amplified at Halliggye Fogou, the best-preserved such tunnel in Cornwall. It measures 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) high. The 8.4 -meter-long (27.6 feet) passage narrows at its end in a tunnel 4 meters (13.124 feet) long and .75 meter (2.46 feet) tall.

Main chamber of the Halliggye Fogou (public domain)

Another tunnel 27 meters (88.6 feet) long branches off to the left of the main chamber and gets darker the farther in one goes. There is what the BBC calls a “final creep” at the end of this passage that has stone lip upon which one could trip.
“In other words, none of it seemed designed for easy access – a characteristic that’s as emblematic of fogous as it is perplexing,” wrote the BBC’s Amanda Ruggeri.

Halliggye Fogou. One of the largest and best preserved of these fogou (curious underground passages) this one originally passed under the rampart of a defended Iron Age settlement. (geograph.org.uk)

Some have speculated they were places to hide, though the lintels of many of them are visible on the surface and Ruggeri says they would be forbidding places to stay if one sought refuge.
Still others have speculated they were burial chambers. An antiquarian who entered Halliggye in 1803 wrote that it had funerary urns. But others entered by the hole he made in the roof, and all the urns are gone. No bones or ashes have been discovered in the six tunnels that modern archaeologists have examined. No remnants of grains have been found, perhaps because the soil is acidic. No ingots from mining have been discovered.
This elimination of storage, mining or burial purposes has led some to speculate that they were perhaps ceremonial or religious structures where people worshiped gods.

“These were lost religions,” said archaeologist James Gossip, who led Ruggeri on a tour of Halligye fogou. “We don’t know what people were worshiping. There’s no reason they couldn’t have had a ceremonial, spiritual purpose as well as, say, storage.”

He added that the purpose and use of the fogous probably changed over the hundreds of years they were in use.
Top image: The Halliggye Fogou (megalithics.com)
By Mark Miller