SHRINES AND CIRCLES

This huge megalithic complex on Bodmin Moor is notable for its substantial remains of more than 50 houses which have been dated by excavation teams from University College, London, to the Middle Bronze Age. Other structures used contemporaneously may date from earlier times. Archaeological team members have been interpreting the site in terms of significant positioning relative to hilltops and other potential sight lines in what is recognised as a sacred landscape.

On Sunday 6 June 1999 members of the Cornish Earth Mysteries Group, together with enthusiasts like Terence Meaden who drove 140 miles from Wiltshire to be there, met at Westmoorgate Farm west of An..... to visit the vast megalithic site of Leskernick. We were met by Henry Broughton, a final-year Ph.D. student of anthropology from University College London who guided us over the extensive complex for five hours starting at 11 a.m. For several seasons UCL professors and students have been studying the site. One early paper was published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society by Barbara Bender, Sue Hamilton and Chris Tilley. At the time of our visit over a dozen archaeologists and anthropologists were working in the inclement weather.

Future visitors should note that there is room foronly about six cars to park at the farm gate at SX 18............... Then follows a long walk westwards over the moor which includes easy stream crossings until the western end of the Leskernick Stone Row is reached at SX .......

THE STONE ROW

Three fallen stones lie at the terminal which was excavated by Dr Chris Tilley . Although the stone holes were located he was not permitted to raise the stones as the Bronze Age people had done because he was told that "we should not put our own interpretations" on to the lithic elements of the landscape. The stone row runs 080 to 260 degrees east of north (magnetic correction of 3 degrees allowed for). There were some 50 surviving stones in all, including the terminal stones, most of which were low flat-topped squat stones some of them peat-covered. Dr Tilley had remarked that when walking westwards along the row the hidden rocky peak of Rough Tor eventually comes into view and this may have been a factor determining the siting of the terminal. The day's visitors wondered whether an equinoctial sunset over Brown Willy had been intended although this would imply that the Bronze Age people had miscalculated the true equinox by a few days---a factor that may not have mattered. Many stones of the row were almost buried in peat, but by standing in line above some of the stones (we were 15 visitors in all) this allowed a more practical photograph to be taken. Several perimeter stones of the northern circle were absent, but the centre stone was a giant although it lay sadly prone. The time then being after 1 p.m. we decided to have lunch in one of the nearest house circles, at which moment the sun came out for a while.

THE HOUSE CIRCLES

The hut circles are remarkable for their use of great megaliths. Each house consists of a ring of huge stones, if not double ring touching, and they all have a gap for an entrance which generally faces south apart from onee which the excavators call the "Shaman's House". This faces the nearby mountain called Brown Willy----Cornwall's highest peak. In the house wall opposite every entrance-gap the biggest megalith of the house is usually found, and the excavators have chosen to call this---probably correctly---the Shrine Stone. In some houses it is a three-stone setting that constitutes the shrine. Although many houses are made from numerous placed stones, sometimes pre-existing earthfast stones were used too and their positions decided the positioning of the others. As many houses embodied a couple of dozen megaliths or more and there are are some 51 houses in all, this implies that something like 1200 megaliths were shifted for the purpose of building alone, and more were used in raised in building communal shrines, pseudo-quoits, cairns and marker stones.

A few of the houses have a cairn inside them. This may mean that when prominent members of the community died the burial took place inside the house which was never used again. We were shown one fine house in which the doorway had been blocked by angled megaliths which had been made to lean towards each other until they met.

Henry Broughton showed us a magnificent communal shrine which he called a field shrine. It lay at a boundary between the western and eastern halves of the settlement. Everyone noticed the megalith on the western side which bore a carving of a sheep's head in left profile and remarked on the fact that a sheep that had recently died naturally lay in front of it.

At a higher level was a house with a notable platform that made it stand out from all the others. A place set aside for for birthing or menstruating mused Cheryl and some others.

Higher still we came to the 'Shaman's House'. Why such a name? we wondered. Chiefly because it alone has a doorway/entrance facing Brown Willy, the highest peak on the moor. "Besides", said Henry, "Everyone who has been working here for so long likes to give places names if they can, as it can be tedious talking house numbers all the time".

There were many places where megaliths had been balanced on others to create gaps or holes beneath, but the most prominent of these was on the hill top which we had progressively been approaching. Chris Tilley, Barbara Bender and the others called this construction a pseudo-quoit, and that is a fair-enough name in a county where there are so many true Neolithic quoits. The Bender/Hamilton/Tilley paper in Proc.Prehistoric Soc. gives a photograph on p. 153, Volume 63, 1997, and states that "the dying rays of the sun, on the Summer solstice, shine through the hole in this 'quoit' just before they slip below the skyline".

We were puzzled by this as no backsight or foresight is present to justify the premise and Cheryl made a point of emphasising this carefully. I said that a more meaningful interpretation might arise if the setting had been intended to recognise the midwinter sunrise whose bearing is close to the converse of the midsummer sunset. In this connection it was possible to establish a foresight on the north-west side by standing between two prominent recumbent stones. However, a backsight is still lacking unless there is a lost standing stone or cairn between The Beacon and Black Rock to the south-east.

Finally, we met Barbara Bender and Chris Dareham who were working inside the base of a house on the eastern side of the stone village. They showed us their latest findings, for that afternoon a piece of slate and a small piece of flint had been discovered, both imported stones. The archaeologists stressed how few findings there had been. There were few imported stones and nothing else survives in the acidic soil, although the positions of post-holes were occasionally spotted inside houses. It was as if the people had been scrupulously clean. I thought this was also evidence of seasonal visiting. Clearing up every autumn and returning every spring---until a spring arrived when no one went back. Posts, I said, supported more than walls and roofs. They supported floors as well. Nobody would live on the hillside down which torrents of rain poured at frequent intervals. They would live on a floor suspended above ground with a void beneath.

Afterword. Does anyone know the origin of the word tor? The OED says its origin is unknown but that it may be related to Gaelic torr. Is it possible that tor is cognate with toran or toranis the ancient sky god, who was the husband of Earth Mother Tara? Tara is a Eurasian earth goddess whose name in Latin is Terra Mater........ Her partner was a sky god