Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SX 0309 5227
Archaeology & History
More than two hundred years ago, an impressive prehistoric burial mound lived in an area that used to be known as Gwallon Down, not far from the impressive Long Stone monolith, about half-a-mile west of Charlestown on the southern edges of St. Austell, but it was completely destroyed in 1801. Thankfully there was a lengthy account made of the site in John Whitaker’s (1804) huge work, but there seems to be little else known of it. He told us:
“In the middle of that extended waste, the downs of St. Austle, was, what was called One Barrow. This waste, in 1801, was resolved to be enclosed, and the barrow was obliged to be levelled. In this operation, the single workman came near the centre, and there found a variety of stones, all slates, ranged erect in an enclosure nearly square. The stones were about one foot-and-a-half in height, apparently fixed in the ground before the formation of the barrow. The stones were all undressed, but had little stones carefully placed in the crevices at the joints of the large, in order to preclude all communication between the rubbish without and the contents within. On the even heads of these stones was laid a square freestone, which had evidently been hewn into this form, which seemed to rest with its extremities on the edges of the others, and was about eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. The summit of the barrow rose about eight or ten feet above all. In the enclosure, the leveller found a dust, remarkably fine, and seemingly inclining to clay. On the surface it was brown, about the middle downwards it took a dark chestnut colour, and at the bottom it approached towards a black. On stirring it up, a multitude of bones appeared, different in the sizes, but none exceeding six or seven inches in length. Among them were some pieces about the largeness of a half-crown, which, from their concave form, convinced him they were parts of a skull. The whole mass of bones and ashes might (he thought) be about one gallon in quantity. On touching the bones, they instantly crumbled into dust, and took the same colour with the same fineness as the dust in which they were found. They were exceedingly white when they were first discovered, but remarkably brittle; the effect assuredly of their calcination in a fire, antecedent to their burial. Much in fineness and in colour with these ashes, appeared several veins of irregular earth on the outside of the enclosure; which, from their position without, yet adjoining, and from the space occupied by them there, he conjectured to have been bodies laid promiscuously upon the funeral pile, but which I conjecture to have been only the ashes adhering to the ground, and not possible to be separated from it, for a burial with the rest within the enclosure. They had nothing of sand in them, but seemed inclining to clay, and even more so (from the adhering soil probably) than the dust of the enclosure. And, as the workman was fully convinced of what every one else must acknowledge, that the ashes and the bones of the enclosure had once belonged to a human body, he very properly took up the whole with care, placed the stones nearly in their original posture within an hedge contiguous, then in building, placed also the bones with the ashes within their original enclosure there, and even placed the covering-stone over both.”
One wonders where precisely the hedgerow happened to be where the stones were placed “nearly in their original posture”, and if this reconstruction was ever recovered.
The site was subsequently mentioned in Polwhele’s (1816) massive survey, reiterating Whitaker’s description, simply telling how:
“With respect to the monumental remains in the neighbourhood of St Austel, a very ingenious correspondent says in one of the mounds of earth on our downs which was lately levelled a kind of urn was discovered which evidently contained human ashes many of the bones were entire but appear to have been calcined I am well acquainted with the man who dug this up.”
References:
- Borlase, William Copeland, Nænia Cornubiæ, Longmans Green Reader: Truro 1872.
- Hammond, Joseph, A Cornish Parish: Being an Account of St. Austell, Skeffington & Sons: London 1897.
- Polwhele, Richard, The History of Cornwall – volume 2, Law & Whittaker: Truro 1816.
- Whitaker, John, The Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall – volume 2, John Stockdale: London 1804.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
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