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.
Regular field systems are one of several methods of field layout known to have
been employed in the Isles of Scilly from the Bronze Age to the Roman period
(c.2000 BC - AD 400); closer dating within that period may be provided by the
visible relationships of the field boundaries to other classes of monument
with a shorter known time-span of use, or by their relationship with an
earlier recorded sea level.
They comprise a collection of field plots defined by boundaries laid out in a
consistent manner, along two dominant axes at approximate right angles to each
other. This results in rectilinear fields which may vary in their size and
length:width ratio both within and between individual field systems. The
fields are bounded by rubble walls or banks, often incorporating edge- or end-
set slabs called orthostats. Within its total area, a regular field system may
be subdivided into blocks differing in the orientations of their dominant
axes.
Regular field systems may be associated with broadly contemporary settlement
sites such as stone hut circles. Some regular field systems on the Isles of
Scilly contain a distinctive association, rarely encountered elsewhere,
whereby certain of their field boundaries directly incorporate or link cairns,
entrance graves and cists in some groups of prehistoric funerary monuments.
Although no precise figure is available, regular field systems form one of the
three principal forms of prehistoric field system, along with irregular field
systems and some groups of prehistoric linear boundaries, which survive in
over 70 areas of the Isles of Scilly. They provide significant insights into
the physical and social organisation of past landscapes and they provide
evidence for the wider contemporary context within which other nationally
important monuments were constructed.
This prehistoric regular field system near St Warna's Carn has survived
reasonably well above the level truncated by the rising sea level, with only
limited damage evident from modern stone-robbing and path formation. Together
with the broadly contemporary field systems nearby to the ENE, this monument
indicates the southerly extent of prehistoric field systems on this peninsula.
The relationship between these field systems, the dispersed cairn group and
the topography on St Agnes demonstrates well the nature of land use among
prehistoric communities and their organisation of funerary and farming
activities.
Details
The monument includes a prehistoric regular field system which occupies the
coastal slope adjoining the northern side of Great Porth Warna, at the
north west extremity of Wingletang Down on St Agnes in the Isles of Scilly.
The regular field system is visible over 0.42ha of the south west facing slope
and is defined at both ends of its extent along the slope by steep natural
scarps descending from rock outcrops. It contains three sub-rectangular plots
adjoining along the slope and defined by banks of heaped rubble, up to 1.5m
wide and 0.75m high, generally turf-covered but with occasional edge-set slabs
protruding from the upper surface, sometimes forming a contiguous row. The
banks of its northern field plot are overlain by a modern drystone wall to
form the boundary of a recent but disused field detached from the rest of the
modern field system to the east.
The southern two plots are defined by three banks running directly downslope,
north east to south west, to the upper shore from a fourth bank extending
along the crest of the coastal slope. The latter bank extends across the upper
ends of these two plots for 55m north west from a large natural outcrop, then
it curves NNW for a further 30m, following the change in angle of the slope,
and defines the ENE side of the northern plot. Finally the bank curves west
along a natural scarp to form the northern side of the northern plot.
Of the resulting three field plots, the northern measures 43m wide, the
central plot 22m wide, north west to south east, and the south eastern plot
32m wide. The former south west extent of the central and south eastern plots
has been truncated by the rise in sea level to the present upper shore-line of
Great Porth Warna, but a natural scarp linking outcrops above the shore
defines the WSW side of the northern plot, now followed by the modern field
wall, giving it a WSW-ENE dimension of 23m.
The bank along the crest of the slope above the central plot is disrupted over
20m by modern paths crossing it and by stone-robbing for a modern field wall
running almost parallel with it and 5m to its north east.
Beyond the monument, other broadly contemporary field systems border the
northern edges of Wingletang Down, 250m and 400m to the ENE, their combined
southerly extent approximating to the southerly limits of modern enclosure on
this broad southern peninsula of St Agnes. The main area of Wingletang Down to
the south contains a large dispersed group of at least 44 prehistoric funerary
cairns of various types. Some of the northern cairns in this group occur among
parts of the prehistoric field systems fringing the 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.
