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LANYON QUOIT & MEN AN TOL CROFTS
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Lanyon Quoit, Men an Tol and Bosiliack Barrow midwinter sunrise
As with most of West Penwith moorland, this area is a mix of yellow flowering gorse, heathers, bracken and scrub, crossed by a few public rights of way and several other well-used tracks.
Lanyon Quoit, close to the minor road from Madron to Morvah, and the Men an Tol some ten minutes walk up a wide track, are, arguably, the two most visited prehistoric sites in West Penwith. Over the course of a year many thousands of people visit these two sites including coach parties from the Continent - Germany, Norway, Switzerland and Holland in particular. Yet the monuments are never over crowded, and much of the enjoyment of visitors is being able to walk the adjacent moorland wilderness and experience the peace and quiet far away from the noise, crowds and traffic of urban life.
The proposed grazing of this area may very well cause damage to the numerous fragile prehistoric and medieval field systems, barrows, ring cairns, a chambered cairn (Bosiliack), and areas of medieval tin streaming. Then there are the world famous holed stone and quoit.
Conversations with people who park opposite the Men-an-Tol Studio confirm that everyone is appalled by the proposed fencing and grazing of the area. Not a single person has yet been found who supports Natural England's proposals. Together with the Nine Maidens Common and Carn Galva this will make one huge area of enclosed land being grazed by cattle. It will be a disaster.
Even after its restoration by concreting-in the deep erosion both sides of the holed stone there is still frequently a large puddle: surely cattle around the stone will help erode it still further. The upright stones are not 'protected' by concrete and will be prone to even greater damage if cattle are allowed to roam here.
After a spate of spring fires, excavation work was carried out in the autumn of 1984 on a chambered cairn (Bosiliack Barrow) and a nearby prehistoric hut settlement and contemporary field system.
The field system, containing several isolated huts, lies uphill from the main hut settlement consisting of at least 12 examples set in a rough oval. The field system has irregular walls up to 1 metre wide and about 1 metre in height along the slopes. The archaeological report concludes with: “It is to be hoped that the whole Bosiliack complex, under enlightened ownership, can be spared the plough and the bulldozer”. Apart from the cairn the other sites lie under a thick covering of bracken and will be subjected, presumably, to the trampling hooves of cattle. [Ref: Preliminary Report on the Excavation of a Chambered cairn, Huts, and Field System at Bosiliack, Madron, West Cornwall, August-September 1984, Institute of Cornish Studies, University of Exeter, Cornwall County Council, Charles Thomas and Jeanette Ratcliffe]