Two round cairns 455m and 475m NW of Trewalla Farm

Reasons for Designation

Bodmin Moor, the largest of the Cornish granite uplands, has long been recognised to have exceptional preservation of archaeological remains. The Moor has been the subject of detailed archaeological survey and is one of the best recorded upland landscapes in England. The extensive relict landscapes of prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date provide direct evidence for human exploitation of the Moor from the earliest prehistoric period onwards. The well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, field systems, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains provides significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land use through time. Round cairns are funerary monuments covering single or multiple burials and dating to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They were constructed as mounds of earth and stone rubble up to 40m in external diameter but usually considerably smaller; a kerb of edge-set stones sometimes bounds the edges of the mound. Burials were placed in small pits, or on occasion within a box-like structure of stone slabs called a cist, let into the old ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn. Round cairns can occur as isolated monuments, in small groups or in larger cemeteries. Their considerable variation in form and longevity as a monument type provides important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices and social organisation in the Bronze Age. They are particularly representative of their period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered worthy of preservation.

These round cairns on Craddock Moor survive reasonably well despite the limited actions of stone robbers, and they have not been archaeologically excavated. Their peripheral stone circles are highly unusual in Cornwall, being a more common feature further east on Dartmoor. The cairns' importance is further enhanced by their situation within a wider grouping of differing but broadly contemporary classes of funerary and ceremonial monuments on Craddock Moor, demonstrating well the diversity and organisation of burial practice and ritual during the Bronze Age.

Details

The monument includes two large round cairns, each with traces of a peripheral setting of spaced stones, situated towards the south-west edge of Craddock Moor on south-east Bodmin Moor. These round cairns are centred 21m apart on a north-south axis. The northern cairn survives as a circular mound, 13m diameter and up to 1.25m high, composed of heaped small to medium stones and earth mostly beneath turf; a circle of ground-fast stones, their tips up to 0.2m across projecting through the turf and spaced 0.75m to 1m apart, surrounds the mound at a distance of 1m from its base. Some limited stone extraction has produced hollows in the mound's central and NW areas, extending to 0.75m deep, but failing to reach ground level or to disrupt the mound's peripheral slope. The southern cairn survives as a mound 10.5m in diameter and up to 1.5m high, also composed of small to medium stones but largely turf-covered, with a flattened top into which a small hollow has been dug, 2m diameter and 0.5m deep. Several small hollows also occur around the mound's base, the result of small-scale stone robbing. This cairn also has remains of a circle of small stones around the mound base, 1.5m beyond it, but not surviving as completely as for the northern cairn, visible as a continuous row only in the south, SE, north and NNW sectors, with isolated stones in appropriate positions elsewhere. This is an isolated pair of cairns situated in a broad saddle between the main plateau of Craddock Moor and Tregarrick Tor to its SW. They lie towards the SW edge of an extensive area of funerary and ceremonial monuments typical of the early and middle Bronze Age (c.2000 - 1000 BC) on the Craddock and Rillaton Moors.

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.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

15062

Legacy System:

RSM

Sources

Other
CAU/RCHME, The Bodmin Moor Survey, Unpubl. draft text. Ch.4, 1.3, fig 17
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1234.02,
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1234.03,
Spoken message: 25/4/1991, Information from P. Herring re the likely date of the structure,

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