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A Bronze Age hoard uncovered by a gardener on an island off Cornwall in 2009 is on public display.
The collection of 47 artefacts, found on St Michael’s Mount, is on display in the island’s castle.
Pieces – including axe-heads, daggers, ingots and a complete metal clasp – have been verified by the British Museum as being about 3,000 years old.
Archaeologists said the objects probably belonged to a blacksmith who had hidden them away for later use.
‘Stashed away?’
The objects were discovered by Darren Little when he was clearing ivy and found an opening in some rock.
“I first found a small axe head, and, after some more investigation, founds ingots, pieces of swords and chisels,” he said.
Although the age of the objects has been identified, archaeologists said they were not sure how they came to be where they were found.
National Trust archaeologist Jim Parry said: “They could have been stashed away when he was doing a deal and he didn’t want to bring them with him, or it could have been a safe bit of overnight storage.
“He could have had a smith’s working area in front of him and just tucked some pieces behind him, forgot about them and moved on.”
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“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.”
Well, we may have looked like we knew what we were doing most of the time, but we did have our moments. We had the map, the compass, the GPS. We even had Rupert’s Columbian Drug Baron Hat. It really should have been easy to make our way from Men-an-Tol across a short expanse of moorland to the 9 Maidens stone circle to the North. However, in the spirit of always making thing much more complicated than they really are, we took the scenic route. Actually, in this part of the world every route is a scenic route – but you know what I mean.
After a few unnecessary scrambles through acres of gorse and brambles we emerged close to what we thought must be the 9 Maidens stone circle. Nobody had bothered to tell us that it had been restored (slightly) and now numbered 11. Actually, turning up before the restoration wouldn’t have helped us much because then there were only 6 stones standing. Or when William Borlase first recorded it – because then there were 18 – out of an original 22! Clearly, the ’9 Maidens’ label is not so much an archaic folk memory as a verbal snapshot taken sometime in the last 200 years.
Early days for this blog but about time I did something about the early days of making this film.
A couple of months after Rupert and I had finally decided to ‘green light’ production of Standing with Stones, in early December 2005 I set off on my own towards Cornwall to do some preliminary filming and exploring. At that time Rupert was still living on the Isle of Man and logistically it did not make sense for him to make a special journey, especially as no script had been written yet. Most importantly, it was a chance to test the way we had chosen to work and to make sure that the motorhome we had bought really was up to the job of mobile hotel, office and camera car. I had invested specially in what I thought was the best camera for the job (given limited resources) – a brand new Sony Z1e HDV camcorder. High definition (albeit heavily compressed) to do justice to landscape and texture, lightweight enough to be carried up mountains along with the other gear and cheap enough so I could buy it.
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Men-an-Tol will always be a hot June day with whispy white clouds in a deep blue sky to me. Actually two hot days. And almost exactly two years ago. I only say that because
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