“You rememebr that lttle cist we saw in the middle of the row at Merrivale ? Well, thius is a perfect Bronze Age example. It’;s abot 4,000 years old and basically, it’s a stone box, and it would have held the remains of an individual or even a family, sometimes – with a coverstone – and then the whole thing would have been covered with as mound of earth, called a cairn”.
“If I was to visit all the sites there are, you’d probably still be watching this film in a year’s time. This end of the country is probably the richest in its wealth of prehistoric sites. Within just a few minutes of where I am now, besides any number of standing stones and cairns, there’s the Merry Maidens stone circle, Tregeseal stone circle, the Nine Maidens stone circle, there’s Boskawen-Un stone circle, there’s Pendeen Vau fogou, Carn Euny fogou, Chun Quoit, Lanyon Quoit – there’s loads of ‘em!
We’ll get glimpses of as many as we can – but as well as some of the better known sites, we’re going to travel to places that you may have never ha the opportunity to visit and quite a few you never knew existed.”
“The passing centuries have left many ancient sites with a mysterious anonymity. We respect them, but we don’t understand them and their social importance ha long since disappeared. We protect them and ignore them – in equal measure.
Knowlton Henge is a perfect example. This Bronze Age site is part of an enormous settlement that sprawls across the surrounding countryside. It’s hard to see a lot of it now, but this raised mound originally rose an astonishing seventeen feet out of the ditch around it.
The careful placing of this Norman church would have been a very powerful way of putting an end to any earlier non Christian goings-on. Now, its crumbling ruin sits like a weary trespasser on unguarded land”.
“Sometimes, like Nine Stones in Dorset, our ancient monuments stand neglected by the roadside, virtually unnoticed by passing motorists and unvisited by all but the enthusiast”.
