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 when you only visit a place once, the way it was gets fixed in your mind. I’m always surprised when I see other folks images of Men-an-Tol on the web and they are of grey days, of drizzle, rain or mist. Doesn’t seem like the same place. Rupert and I (and the film) were certainly blessed with the weather when we were filming in Cornwall – these sites are right at the beginning of the film and what a difference it would have made if this footage had been of a dull and overcast countryside. As for Men-an-Tol itself? What can you say? It’s cute. And yet, despite its unassuming size, this little thing is a mind bending anomaly. For a start, we always start to interpret it in its present, visible configuration. But whose to say it was always arranged like this? Stones this size are relatively easy to move about and who’s to say this isn’t a Victorian folly made up of discovered Neolithic/Bronze Age remnants? What struck Rupert and I though, was the faint mound of what looks like the remains of a small cairn a couple of feet to the East of the monument.
We feel it is most likely that the stones we see today were once part of a small burial and that originally, the stones would have been either hidden entirely or embedded in the mound – perhaps the holed stone providing the entrance.The burial theory is certainly one favoured by archaeologists. However, the Cornwall Archaeology Unit has suggested that the stones were once part of a 16.5 metre diameter circle made up of 19 or 20 stones. In that case I would bet that 19 is the more likely for reasons of lunar observation.
Here, (photo right) you can see me and the remaining outlier that may have been part of the original circle. You can also see that I have swallowed the holed stone and it fits neatly round my midriff.
Rupert did script a few words about something very few comment on, though. Indeed we did include them in the shoot but (for reasons of brevity and pace) I left them ‘on the cutting room floor’.
If you look around the countryside at Men-an-Tol, you will notice that there is much dry stone walling as field enclosure. If you look closely though, many of the stones used to make up the walls look alarmingly as if they could easily have been megaliths once upon a time.
We are not drawing any conclusions from this – it’s just that when you see the abundance of stone that is available used in this fashion you have to ask – just how mixed up and mucked about with are our ancient landscapes and how does it affect our interpretations of what we can see?
On the other hand, Men-an-Tol could just be a Neolithic LOL sign – though I don’t know if they’d laugh or cry to know of what we do and say about the stuff they left behind.
