On the eastern edge of Bodmin Moor, Rillaton Barrow looks across the expanse of verdant fields, lush hedgebanks and woods of the Lynher and Tamar valleys, towards the blur of the Dartmoor skyline.
Despite this impressive tumulus being plundered for building material over many years, the granite-lined burial chamber, or cist, was not discovered until 1837. Its revered occupant had lain undisturbed for thousands of years, together with dagger and faience beads, and a rare and beautiful corrugated golden cup, which dates from the early bronze age and is now in the British Museum.
There must have been a fabulous funeral up here, close to the three ceremonial stone circles – now known as the Hurlers – and the fortified enclosure of Stowe’s Pound. The moor has since been exploited for its metal ores and durable stone, so the prehistoric remains are crisscrossed with scars, bumps, hollows and trackways relating to industrial activity.
After weeks of damp Atlantic weather, rough grazing has greened up. The turf is starred with tormentil, low cushions of brilliant gorse attract bees, rushes flower in puddles and old prospecting pits, and rank bracken obscures the jumbles of worked moorstone.
A few long-horned cows lurk among tall bushes of gorse, and red-marked shorn sheep scatter across this open landscape, outnumbered today by visiting people enjoying a rare dry interval. Some contemplate the mysterious circles while children run rings around the standing stones. Others head uphill for the Cheesewring – the tor that seems to teeter on the edge of the deep quarry excavated into the southern part of Stowe’s Hill. Within the heaped-up stone ramparts of this ancient hilltop enclosure, spry youths clamber on to the capstones of other tors whose water-filled hollows used to be described as the devil’s punchbowls.
West from here, on the hillside above Witheybrook Marsh, the derelict quarry of Gold Diggings, with its finger dumps of wasted granite, is a destination for adventurous aficionados. From the top of blasted rock faces, they leap feet first into deep water, swim about and emerge for another climb and jump.
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