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.
The prehistoric field system on the east flank of Peninnis Head survives well,
clearly displaying the character of the prehistoric land division and the
strong influences upon it of the natural topography. Its broader prehistoric
land use context is illustrated by the field system survivals on the south
east flank of the promontory and by the cairn cemetery about the summit. Its
relationship with that cairn cemetery also demonstrates the wider manner in
which farming and funerary activities were organised among the prehistoric
communities that used this field system.
Details
The monument includes a prehistoric field system along the eastern flank of
Peninnis Head, a broad promontory on the south coast of St Mary's in the Isles
of Scilly.
The field system is defined by rubble banks, up to 2m wide and 0.5m high,
generally turf-covered but occasional lengths incorporate continuous rows of
projecting boulders and edge-set slabs up to 0.9m high. Where they roughly
follow the contour the banks appear as marked steps, called lynchets, rising
to 1m high along their downslope face and formed by soil movement on the
gradient against the banks' uphill sides and away from their downhill sides, a
process accelerated by early cultivation.
The field system's boundaries define a series of adjoining subrectangular
plots visible along at least 190m of the ENE-facing slope behind the end of
the promontory, extending into the south eastern of the modern fields that
subdivide much of this flank. Their layout is strongly influenced by the
underlying terrain, with banks tending to run either north west - south east,
along the slope, or north east - south west, directly downslope. In addition,
natural bedrock outcrops and massive boulders were used as focal points to
define corners and, with some larger outcrops, the sides of some plots.
At least six small plots are visible, of 0.15ha-0.25ha in extent. In the
more uneven ground behind the extreme tip of the promontory, the plot at the
south east is irregular in shape, defined to each side by large outcrops and
along its upper, south west, side by a curving bank linking the upper ends of
the outcrops. The bank along the upper edge of the rest of the field system
then curves up the slope and heads north west, straight to a small outcrop
near the centre of the nearby modern field and continuing beyond as a slight
lynchet to the northern modern wall of that field. At least two banks run
downslope from this upper boundary, one near the top of its curved sector, the
other from the outcrop in the modern field, creating three more plots along
the flank's upper slope. Each of these plots has a lower boundary, visible as
a wall linking lower slope outcrops below the south eastern plot and, below
the central and north western plots, as pronounced midslope lynchets across
the modern field. Below those lynchets, banks run downslope to define two
further plots occupying the lower slope.
Beyond this monument, another area of prehistoric field system of similar
character occupies the south east coastal flank at the tip of Peninnis Head,
from 90m to the south west, exploiting a usable pocket of land on the largely
rocky flanks at the end of the promontory. In addition, a broadly contemporary
cemetery of funerary cairns is dispersed about the summit area at the tip of
the promontory, the nearest being situated 85m SSW of this scheduling. These
features are the subjects of separate schedulings.
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.
