These stone circles are called "The Hurlers".
The Hurlers is a group of 3 stone circles, near the village of Minions on the eastern flank of Bodmin Moor, which date from the Bronze Age: around 1500 BC. The name is said to derive from a legend in which a group of men were turned into stone as a punishment for playing a game of Cornish hurling on the Sabbath.
In 2013, the strip of grass between the centres of the stone circles was excavated to uncover a 4000 year old cobbled stone pavement joining the two circles. Archaeologists describe this as a "unique" structure.
More information about the Hurler Stone Circles from the Cornwall Heritage Trust.
Many of the folk names for standing stones such as the Hurlers, Pipers and Nine Maidens are based on petrification legends, which generally involve punishment for some form of Pagan fun such as dancing on a Sunday. It is thought that the early Christian Church encouraged such myths in an attempt to prevent old Pagan practices occurring at these sites.
It is not fully understood what function the stone circles served, although excavation of some monuments has shown an association with burials. Some circles also appear to have been used to mark the passage of time and seasons, which is indicated by the alignment of stones with landmarks, to mark important solar or lunar events such as the sunrise and sunset at the winter or summer solstice. Where excavated, they have been found to date from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (2400-1000 BC).
Some of the earliest mining remains are shallow pits dug to home in on and then mine lodes (mineral veins) at the surface of the bedrock. These are known as shode workings as pits were initially dug to locate displaced fragments of ore within the soil known as shodes. Further pits were then dug to follow these fragments back to the main lode that they had broken off. Once the lode was located, it was worked using a line of pits along it.
The adjective "shoddy" is thought to have been derived from shode, initially via the textile industry for recycling fragments of usable cloth from rubbish. Later, when garments made from this material were found to disintegrate, it came to mean "inferior quality".
The lines of pits here mark the positions of lodes of tin ore. The one here was known as the Grace Dieu Lode. The next set are along Greenhill Lode and the one after are along Trelawney's lode.
The mound is an ancient neolithic tomb known as Rillaton Barrow. The entrance to the tomb is on the east side, to your right as you approach.
Rillaton Barrow is a neolithic tomb located near Minions, on the east side of Bodmin Moor. When it was excavated in 1837, numerous artefacts were found alongside the human remains, including a bronze dagger, beads, pottery, glass and - most notably - a gold vessel known as the Rillaton Gold Cup. Radiocarbon dating of the artefacts places them around 2300 BC and research has linked the style of this cup with the East Mediterranean, showing evidence of a trading link between Cornwall and the Mycenaean Empire over 4000 years ago. The cup became lost after its discovery but turned up years later in the dressing room of King George V as a receptacle for his collar studs. It is now on show at the British Museum, though it still belongs to the Royal Collection. An exact copy may be seen in the Royal Cornwall Museum at Truro.
The line of pits extending from the protruding fence are along the line of Stowe's Lode - the most productive mineral lode in the area. Surface mining here is documented in 1513 and could well have been taking place since Early Mediaeval (Celtic) times. The lode (and line of pits) extends down the valley to the remains of West Phoenix Mine.
It is thought that underground mining took place here during the 1830s, initially using shallow shafts connected to drainage adits (near-horizontal tunnels) that emptied into the river valley. As mining extended below the level that could be drained though gravity, horse power was initially used to pump out the mine and then a small steam engine. In the 1870s, new engine houses were built to work the mine on a larger scale for copper as well as tin. The engine houses were destroyed in a military exercise in the 1950s.
The track leads to Gold Diggings quarry on the hill ahead.
Gold Diggings (also known as "Goldiggins") Quarry was used as a source of high-quality granite for monuments. Work began in the mid-19th Century and it was still working in the 1920s but is thought to have closed by the Second World War. The quarry consisted of three excavation pits and the locations of three timber cranes have been identified. Steam power was used to drive the cranes and pump water from the quarry pits.
The two flooded quarry pits are now a fairly popular spot for wild swimming.
The Cheesewring quarry was created to cut blocks of granite from Stowe's Hill which were used for Tower Bridge in London amongst other things. The first lease for quarrying granite was issued in 1845 and by 1858, production had exceeded 11,000 tons. In 1868, three cranes built from timber were used to raise rock from the quarry. Production declined in the 20th Century and more-or-less ceased by 1934.
On the opposite side of the bank, which can be reached by bearing right along the bottom of the bank, is a rock outcrop with a hole with a date carved on a stone to the right of the hole.
Daniel Gumb is described in a letter from 1814:
Daniel Gumb ...was bred a stone-cutter... By close application Daniel acquired, even in his youth, a considerable stock of mathematical knowledge, and, in consequence, became celebrated throughout the adjoining parishes. Called by his occupation to hew blocks of granite on the neighbouring commons, and especially in the vicinity of that great natural curiosity called the Cheesewring, he discovered near this spot an immense block, whose upper surface was an inclined plane. This, it struck him, might be made the roof of a habitation such as he desired; sufficiently secluded from the busy haunts of men to enable him to pursue his studies without interruption, whilst it was contiguous to the scene of his daily labour. Immediately Daniel went to work, and cautiously excavating the earth underneath, to nearly the extent of the stone above, he obtained a habitation which he thought sufficiently commodious. The sides he lined with stone, cemented with lime, whilst a chimney was made by perforating the earth at one side of the roof... The top of the rock which roofed his house served Daniel for an observatory, where at every favourable opportunity he watched the motions of the heavenly bodies, and on the surface of which, with his chisel, he carved a variety of diagrams, illustrative of the most difficult problems of Euclid, etc. These he left behind him as evidences of the patience and ingenuity with which he surmounted the obstacles that his station in life had placed in the way of his mental improvement.
The Cheesewring is a tor on Stowes Hill near Minions. The tor gets is name because it is topped with a natural rock formation that looks like the press with a stack of weights that was used to make cheese (and also cider as the apple pulp was known as "cheese"). The cheesewring was a well-known landscape feature by Tudor times and it featured in large illustrations in the margins of Cornwall maps at the end of this period. The granite slabs, which appear to have been balanced, were created by erosion over many thousands of years.
The granite wall is part of Stowe's Pound.
Stowe's Hill is the 4th highest in Cornwall at 381 metres. The hilltop enclosure - Stowe's Pound - comprises two defensive walls made of granite rubble and dates from the early Neolithic period (4000-3500 BC). Inside the walls are two Bronze Age cairns, a stone round house and over 100 house platforms.
Sadly, people ignorant of what Stowe's Pound represents removed some of the stones to build rock stacks ("fairy stacks"). Removing stones from the Egyptian Pyramids would be bad enough but Stowe's Pound is at least 1,000 years older than the pyramids! Many of the removed stones have now been replaced as well as possible by volunteers.
Rock balancing art is best avoided on Bodmin Moor as what looks to the untrained eye like a pile of rocks is very likely to be prehistoric remains, and often a grave or memorial which is best not desecrated. Even accidental vandalism of ancient monuments is an illegal act that could result in a criminal record and jail sentence.
Fortunately, Cornwall has a considerable supply of pebbly beaches where towering extravaganzas can be constructed without such risks.
The word granite comes from the Latin granum (a grain), in reference to its coarse-grained structure. Granite forms from a big blob of magma (known as a pluton) which intrudes into the existing rocks. The huge mass of molten rock stores an enormous amount of heat so the magma cools very slowly below the surface of the Earth, allowing plenty of time for large crystals to form.
Continue ahead about 20 paces to reach a faint path and turn right to follow it to where it merges into a slightly better-defined path.
Follow this grassy path around the base of the hill.
At the far end of the hill, as you approach to a lane, head towards a standing stone in front of a cottage with 2 chimneys to descend to the lane.
As you round the hill, the rocky hill ahead is Sharp Tor.
Tors started out as a lump of granite beneath the surface, which cracked vertically into squares and then part-way through horizontally to form something resembling a stuck-together stack of square pancakes. Millions of years of weathering then gradually rounded these off and widened the cracks between the layers to result in a more burger-like appearance.
In some cases the horizontal cracks didn't go all the way through so the layers are still joined (the skewer through the brioche bun to stretch the burger analogy to its limit). In the cases where they did fully separate, a massive rocking stone such as the famous Logan Rock at Treen could be created, or the whole lot could collapse into a pile of huge rocks.
The "basins" on the tops of some of the tors are also the result of repeated freezing and thawing of water which has collected on the surface.
The word is from the Celtic language but is likely to have come from the Latin turris, meaning "tower", derived from a similar word in Ancient Greek.
Beard-like lichens (known as Old Man's Beard) are very sensitive to sulphur dioxide in the air. Where the air quality is poor, at best they only manage to grow a few millimetres and may not survive at all. Long beards are therefore an indicator of clean air.
Stoats and weasels are related to badgers and to otters, which they more closely resemble. The stoat is roughly twice the size of a weasel but can be distinguished without the need to measure it by its black-tipped tail. The weasel preys mostly on voles, but the stoat will take on prey much larger than itself including birds and even full-grown rabbits. During the winter, the coat of the stoat (and also some populations of weasel) changes colour from brown to white to camouflage it in the snow.
The soft, silky winter fur of the stoat is known as ermine and garments made from this were a luxury associated with royalty and high status. Given that stoats mark their territory using pungent anal scent glands, it’s likely a fair amount of washing of the furs occurred before being draped over royalty.
Sphagnum (peat) mosses use compressed air to launch their spores. To get an idea of the acceleration that the spores are launched with, an astronaut in a rocket launch experiences an acceleration g-force of about 3 g and the maximum in a fighter jet is about 9 g. Sphagnum moss spores are accelerated at 36,000 g!
To get around inside a mine and also to search for new bodies of ore, internal horizontal tunnels known as "drives" were dug and the network of these arranged at a particular height formed a "level" in the mine.
Three small mines were amalgamated in 1836 and renamed as Wheal Phoenix in 1842. A final rename to Phoenix United Mines occurred when West Wheal Phoenix was also included. Mining was initially for copper but moved over to tin in the 1860s. The mine closed at the end of the 1890s due to falling metal prices. Coal was delivered and ore sent out via the Liskeard and Caradon railway.
Since the bodies of ore in Cornwall lie in approximately vertical cracks (e.g. 70 degrees from horizontal) between other rocks, these seams of ore (known as "lodes") were followed using near-vertical cavities inside the mine known as "stopes". Arrangements of ladders and platforms were used to move up and down these spaces.
The grassy areas around the mining remains provide a grazing opportunity for rabbits.
If a rabbit is placed on its back and its legs are stroked, it appears to go into a relaxed trance and many owners of pet rabbits thought this was a cute thing to do that was enjoyable for the rabbit. It's now understood that this reaction, known as "tonic immobility", occurs when the rabbit is extremely stressed because it thinks it is about to be eaten by a predator! It is effectively a "playing dead" reaction to lull a predator into a false sense of security so the rabbit can make a sudden escape when the predator isn't paying attention.
Jackdaws can often be seen perching on the old mine buildings.
Jackdaws are very adept vocal mimics and have been known to sing virtually anything including opera and Madonna! They can be trained to copy the human voice but only for single words or short phrases.
The ruins with a series of arches are from two adjoining buildings associated with the Phoenix United Mine. One was a boiler house with room for four boilers and the other contained a horizontal steam engine that was used to power a series of pneumatic stamps to crush tin ore.
The engine house with a surviving chimney is known as the Prince of Wales engine house and was used to pump water from the Phoenix United mines.
The adjacent building (which no longer has a chimney) is the remains of another engine house. This was for a whim (winding) engine used to raise ore from the mine.
The common name "foxglove" dates back many hundreds of years but the origin is unknown. The "gloves" almost certainly refers to the shape of the flowers, and the Latin name Digitalis (finger-like) is along similar lines. The curious part is the "fox" and many different suggestions have been made as to where it came from. It is possible that it is a corruption of another word. One suggestion is "folks" which was once used to mean "fairies".
Bracken has been used as a fuel for centuries but is of interest as a modern biofuel due to its very high calorific value. Normal firewood produces around 15-19 gigajoules of heat per tonne of material (depending on moisture content - drier is more efficient hence kiln-dried logs). Elephant grass can produce around 18 GJ/t and bracken can deliver 21 GJ/t. At least one company has piloted creating compressed fuel briquettes from bracken in a similar way to elephant grass.
The large hill on the left is Caradon Hill.
Caradon Hill is the 6th highest hill in Cornwall with a 371 metre summit. The name is thought to originate from the Cornish word car for fort. The slopes are dotted with the remains of engine houses and the area was once famous for its copper mines, which were discovered relatively late in Cornwall's mining history. In an account documented in the early 20th Century, the area was described:
On Saturday nights after pay-day, the populous villages of Caradon Town, Pensilva, Minions and Crows Nest were crowded with men, and resembled in character the mining camps of Colorado and the Far West.
The track is the trackbed of the Liskeard and Caradon railway.
The Liskeard and Caradon Railway was a mineral railway built to transport granite, copper and tin ore from around Minions to Looe Harbour. The journey from Moorswater to Looe was initially on the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal and later on the Liskeard and Looe Railway which was built alongside the canal.
There was plenty of demand for day-trippers to travel by rail to The Hurlers and The Cheesewring but the mineral railway was not licensed to carry paying passengers. From around 1850, when the mines and quarries were not working on Sundays, the railway would offer to carry passengers free of charge. Since it was legal to charge for cargo, a fee would be charged instead for their hats and baggage.
The engine house on the right was part of the South Phoenix Mine.
South Phoenix Mine is a complex of disused engine houses and quarries near Minions. Mining for tin and copper began in 1836 and continued until 1914. The engine house over Houseman's Shaft has been turned into the Minions Heritage Centre.
At this point you can turn right along the track to take an optional diversion to the Minions Heritage Centre.
Minions Heritage Centre is located in the restored Houseman's Engine House of the South Phoenix mine. The building contains a permanent exhibition on the history, ecology, archaeology and mining heritage of the surrounding area.
Minions is a small village on the south-east corner of Bodmin Moor. Near the car park, one of the engine houses of the South Phoenix mine has been converted into the a heritage centre which interprets the history of the surrounding landscape. The area surrounding Minions offers a wealth of archaeological interest from early Bronze Age to the Tin and Copper Mining which finished early in the last century. Most of the village is over 300m, and Minions claims to be the highest village in Cornwall, rivalling St Breward.
The Cheesewring Hotel in Minions claimed to be Cornwall's highest pub, at an altitude of 995ft. It opened as a coaching inn in 1863 and in more recent times was a hotel and restaurant serving local food and a variety of Cornish ales. An electrical fault in the winter of 2021 caused a fire and despite the efforts of firefighters, the pub burned down.
The source of the River Seaton is in Minions near the Cheesewring Hotel and it connects with two tributary streams running through St Cleer. Due to the copper mining activity around Caradon Hill, the tributary streams contain dissolved copper salts where the groundwater drains from old mines or percolates through waste tips. The level of copper in the main river is not high enough to prevent fish living in it but it does restrict the invertebrate species that are able to live in the river and so the fish population is lower than surrounding rivers as there is less for them to eat. The river runs for just over 10 miles before reaching the sea at Seaton beach.
The little yellow flowers with four petals all over the moor in July are tormentil (Potentilla erecta). Its common names include Bloodroot and Flesh and Blood because roots yield a red dye which is still used as an ingredient for artists' colours (tormentil red). The roots also have very a high tannin content and have even been used to tan leather. Extracts from the plant have been widely used in folk medicine and is it still used as a remedy for diarrhoea and as a lotion for skin sores.
Squirrels are rodents, closely related to chipmunks and slightly more distantly to dormice. The word "squirrel" originates from an ancient Greek word meaning "shadow-tailed", referring to the bushy tail of a squirrel. A family group of squirrels is known as a "drey" (also the word for a squirrel nest). A group of unrelated squirrels is known as a "scurry", though squirrels tend not to hang out in groups.
Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK from the USA in the late 19th Century and within decades they had replaced the native red squirrel in most parts of the country.
Compared to red squirrels, grey squirrels are able to eat a wider diet (including acorns), are larger so can survive colder winters, and are better able to survive in the fragmented habitats created by urbanisation. They are also thought to be carriers of a squirrel pox virus which they usually recover from but has been fatal to red squirrels, although red squirrels are now also developing some immunity.
To date, culling of grey squirrels has not reversed their domination of woodland habitat and alternative approaches such as planting food with contraceptives are being explored as a means to control the population. The theory is that infertile squirrels can compete for food against fertile squirrels, whereas culling can create a glut of food resulting in a higher number of squirrels surviving which replace those that were exterminated. Natural predators such as goshawks or pine martens also remove more grey squirrels than red squirrels. This is because red squirrels are more savvy having co-evolved with the predators so for example they recognise the scent of pine martens and actively avoid areas with this.
Squirrels assess each of their acorns before burying them. If an acorn is too light (which suggests it might have a hole), the squirrel will eat it immediately rather than risking it going mouldy.
In order to later find the nuts that they've buried, squirrels need to be organised. Some species of squirrel have been studied and found to structure their hoards by type of nut e.g. burying all their acorns under one tree and all their conkers under another. This is equivalent to us organising all the veg onto one shelf of the fridge to make it easier to remember where to look for them.
As well as forgetting where they buried some of them, squirrels may also lose a quarter of their buried food to birds, other rodents and fellow squirrels. Squirrels therefore use dummy tactics to confuse thieves by sometimes just pretending to bury a nut.
Squirrels eyes are positioned on the sides of their head which allows them to spot predators approaching from behind them. When a squirrel spots a predator, its runs away in a zigzag pattern. This confuses many of their predators but unfortunately it doesn't work well for cars.
Young squirrels suffer a high mortality rate in the wild and less than one in three make it to adulthood. The ones that do, live on average for about 6 years, although a lucky one can live to about 12 years old. In captivity, where there are neither predators, cars nor cold winters to contend with, they can reach 20 years old.
By using their tail as a parachute, squirrels are able to survive falls from high trees. This allows them to attempt risky jumps between treetops that don't always work out. They are one of the few mammals that can (but not always) survive an impact at their terminal velocity i.e. if a squirrel jumped out of an aeroplane, it may well survive.
In urban areas in cold countries such as Canada, a black form of the grey squirrel is more common which is able to withstand the cold better both by retaining more heat and also having a slower metabolism. In wilderness areas where predators are more common, the black squirrels don't seem to do so well, perhaps because they are less camouflaged against trees than the grey ones.
There are 33 designated National Landscape regions in England many of which were created at the same time as the National Parks. In fact the AONB status is very similar to that of National Parks.
A single Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) was established in 1959 and is itself subdivided into 12 sections. 11 of these are stretches of the coastline and the 12th is Bodmin Moor. In 2023, the AONBs in England and Wales were renamed National Landscapes to better reflect the similarity in their status to National Parks.
Granite formed as a molten blob of rock beneath the surface, underneath millions of tons of other rock. As the granite cooled, it cracked, mostly vertically due to the pressure from above. Hot water circulated through the cracks, reacting chemically with the rocks and depositing minerals. Over millions of years, the softer rocks above were eroded and the pressure from the weight of the rock above was released, causing horizontal cracking in the granite. The result is cubic blocks where the rough edges have been gradually smoothed by weathering.
Sheep were one of the first animals to be domesticated by humans. Domestication is thought to have started roughly around 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. The first sheep weren't woolly and were used for meat, milk and their (woolless) hides which were sometimes tanned to make leather. Woolly sheep were bred about 4,000 years later in Iran.
Once domesticated sheep had become woolly, individuals with white fleeces were selected for breeding as this was the easiest colour to dye. This was made easier by the genes giving rise to a white fleece being dominant. The recessive genes still do sometimes come together to produce a black lamb in an otherwise white flock. The expression "black sheep of the family" arises from this and its negative connotation was based on the economic undesirability of their fleeces.
Sheep are now farmed pretty much solely for their meat rather than their wool. The reason that you may see scruffy sheep with wool falling off is that due to cheap synthetic (plastic) fibres, demand for wool declined through the late 20th and early 21st centuries resulting in many sheep not being shorn due to the wool price being lower than the cost of the labour to remove it.
Meat sold as lamb comes from sheep of around 1 year of age. Mutton is from a sheep typically of around 2-3 years of age and is much darker red in colour. Due to more muscle and fat, the flavour of mutton is stronger and the meat is tougher so it typically slow-cooked.
As well as being environmentally-friendly, wool fibre has a number of technical properties that synthetic fibres lack including fire-resistance and the ability to absorb and release moisture. Some novel high-tech uses are now being found for it including biodegradable ground cover matting to control soil erosion. As concerns grow over the effects of plastics in the environment and micro plastics turning up in all kinds of unwanted places (such as 80% of the human blood samples tested in a study), this may also lead to a renaissance in natural fibres including wool. It may therefore not be too long before demand increases and fields are once again full of neatly-shorn sheep.
At short range, ewes and lambs are able to recognise each other by smell. At longer distances, they can recognise each other visually. Where this is not possible, they are able to recognise each other solely though their calls. Sheep can identify a unique signature for each individual based on the pitch and timbre of the bleat.
Due to their flocking behaviour, sheep have gained a reputation for not being intelligent but actually this is more about being nervous of being eaten. In a study, their intelligence was found to be on a par with cows: they can recognise human faces, learn a name given to them etc. This may even extend to problem-solving: in Cornwall we've seen them escape into a neighbouring field by operating a kissing gate and in West Yorkshire there are reports of sheep that have worked out that they can cross a cattle grid by rolling on their backs with their feet in the air.
The words "lamb" and "sheep" are from Germanic languages via Old English. The word "mutton" came via Norman French from a Latin word multonem which itself is thought to have come from a Celtic word for ram. The Cornish word for a neutered male sheep - mols - is thought to be from the same origin.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
The ponies on Bodmin Moor are semi-feral: they are all owned by farmers, but allowed to roam free on the moor. Many are not microchipped and look similar to others, so for people other than their owners, it can be difficult to tell to whom they actually belong. During the winter, natural food is scarce so the farmers supplement the ponies' diets; this prevents the ponies wandering off altogether.
The Cornwall Heritage Trust (CHT) is a charity founded in 1985 to preserve and strengthen Cornish heritage. The CHT own some historic structures such as the Treffry Viaduct and also manage a number of state-owned English Heritage sites in Cornwall such as Carn Euny.
The CHT management of some of the smaller English Heritage sites follows controversy in 1999 when the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament pressure group removed several English Heritage signs. CHT now manage these in partnership with local communities, Natural England, Historic England and English Heritage.
As part of the English Heritage partnership, members of the Cornwall Heritage Trust can visit the larger English Heritage sites in Cornwall (Tintagel Castle, Restormel Castle, Launceston Castle, Pendennis Castle, Chysauster etc) free-of-charge. CHT annual membership is therefore quite an economical option for anyone intending to visit multiple English Heritage sites solely in Cornwall. The family membership is particularly good value-for-money.
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