Reasons for Designation
The Isles of Scilly, the westernmost of the granite masses of south west
England, contain a remarkable abundance and variety of archaeological remains
from over 4000 years of human activity. The remote physical setting of the
islands, over 40km beyond the mainland in the approaches to the English
Channel, has lent a distinctive character to those remains, producing many
unusual features important for our broader understanding of the social
development of early communities.
Throughout the human occupation there has been a gradual submergence of the
islands' land area, providing a stimulus to change in the environment and its
exploitation. This process has produced evidence for responses to such change
against an independent time-scale, promoting integrated studies of
archaeological, environmental and linguistic aspects of the islands'
settlement.
The islands' archaeological remains demonstrate clearly the gradually
expanding size and range of contacts of their communities. By the post-
medieval period (from AD 1540), the islands occupied a nationally strategic
location, resulting in an important concentration of defensive works
reflecting the development of fortification methods and technology from the
mid 16th to the 20th centuries. An important and unusual range of post-
medieval monuments also reflects the islands' position as a formidable hazard
for the nation's shipping in the western approaches.
The exceptional preservation of the archaeological remains on the islands has
long been recognised, producing an unusually full and detailed body of
documentation, including several recent surveys.
Platform cairns are funerary monuments of Early Bronze Age date (c.2000-1600
BC). They were constructed as low flat-topped mounds of stone rubble, up to
40m in external diameter though usually considerably smaller, covering single
or multiple burials. Some examples have other features, including peripheral
banks and internal mounds constructed on the platform. A kerb of slabs or
edge-set stones sometimes bounds the edge of the platform, and a peripheral
bank or mound if present. Platform cairns can occur as isolated monuments, in
small groups or in cairn cemeteries. In cemeteries they are normally found
alongside cairns of other types.
Platform cairns form a significant proportion of the 387 surviving cairns on
the Isles of Scilly; this is unusual in comparison with the mainland. All
surviving examples on the Isles of Scilly are considered worthy of protection.
This platform cairn near Horse Point has survived substantially intact despite
minor disturbance from the antiquarian excavation. The incorporation of
natural outcrops into the mound is a distinctive feature found in certain
other cairns on the Isles of Scilly but unusual and rare nationally. The
presence of this cairn in a dispersed group containing various other classes
of cairn shows the diversity of funerary activity during the Bronze Age. The
relationships between this cairn group, the nearby prehistoric field systems
and the topography on St Agnes demonstrate well the nature of land use among
prehistoric communities and the organisation of funerary and farming
activities.
Details
The monument includes a prehistoric kerbed platform cairn incorporating a
natural outcrop on its periphery and situated on the southern edge of the
southern headland of St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly.
The platform cairn survives with a circular mound of heaped rubble measuring
6m in diameter, rising 0.3m to a flattened platform, 4m in diameter. The mound
extends north west from a large natural granite outcrop whose exposures define
the mound's eastern and south eastern perimeter. The edges of the mound's
flattened platform are defined by a kerb of at least seven spaced slabs, some
of which are edge-set and measure up to 0.75m long and 0.3m high, though
generally rising only 0.1m-0.2m above the turf. The kerb is visible around the
northern half of the platform, with a further slab on its southern edge. The
centre of the platform has a turf-covered hollow measuring 2m east-west by
1.5m north-south and 0.3m deep, resulting from an unrecorded antiquarian
excavation.
This cairn is part of a group containing at least 44 cairns of various types
dispersed about the heathland and abundant granite outcrops of Wingletang
Down, the broad southern peninsula of St Agnes. Prehistoric field systems
border the northern edges of the Down, partly incorporating several cairns
towards the north east edge of this cairn group. Another large and diverse
cairn group occupies the southern part of Gugh, 450m north east of Wingletang
Down.
MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.
