Photograph of Pendeen Vau, St Just-in-Penwith, c.1860s

This compact little photograph shows the fogou at Pendeen, the nearby house being the former seat of the Borlase family. Fogous are subterranean passages mainly confined to the western half of Cornwall, though similar structures can be found in Scotland and Ireland. Their purpose has been debated for centuries and proposed explanations include structures built for refuge, for food storage and for ritual. John Norden, writing in the late 16^th century described it as "Pendene vowe, a holl or deepe vaute in the grounde, wherinto the sea floweth at high water, verie farr under the earth: Manie have attempted, but none effected, the search of the depth of it." In fact the fogou is a mere 24 feet long. Image courtesy of and © Cornwall Record Office.

Photographic reproduction from a lantern slide of Chûn Castle, Morvah and Madron, c.1890s

The hillfort on the summit of Chûn Downs is an impressive structure. A circular fort with a large inner wall, perhaps originally up to 20 feet high, is surrounded by a ditch, a further wall, and a further ditch. The remains of huts and enclosures can be seen within the central space and there is a deep well on the northern side. Pottery ranging in date from the fourth century BC to the first century AD have been found during five excavations between 1862 and 1930. Image courtesy of and © David Thomas.

Photographic reproduction from a lantern slide of Chysauster Courtyard Settlement, Gulval, c.1890s

The settlement at Chysauster is probably the most visually impressive of the Iron Age settlements in Cornwall and was the first prehistoric site that I ever visited, back in the 1970s. Courtyard houses are so named as the house and its associated structures are arranged around an open courtyard. Aileen Fox gives a vivid description of the group of courtyard houses as "a village of eight such houses, arranged in pairs on opposite sides of a street, with two or three more together with an underground store (fogou) a short distance away. The houses are irregular ovals, up to 90ft long, terraced into the hillside, with the entrances turned away from the prevailing south-west winds. Across the courtyard was the principal dwelling, a round or oval hut with the roof supported on posts set in stone sockets. On one side of the courtyard was a long narrow room which was a work room, sometimes for industrial purposes, and on the other there was a recess with a lean-to roof, probably a stable for ponies." Image courtesy of and © David Thomas.

Photographic reproduction from a lantern slide of Bosporthennis Beehive Hut, Zennor, c.1890s

The original purpose of the beehive hut at Bosporthennis is uncertain and Craig Weatherhill suggests the possibility of its being a type of overground fogou. A H Allcroft, writing in 1908, regards the structure as possibly the most perfect specimen now remaining in England and decribes it as "a double hut of two rooms, one circular, the other rectangular. The circular room has a diameter of 13 feet, and the other measures but 9 feet by 7 feet. In the wall of the latter, 4 feet from the ground, is a window about 12 inches square. The doorways, with their lintels and jambs, are in excellent preservation, and the principal entrance faces to the south-west. Huts of this type, rare in England, are more frequent in Ireland, where they are popularly believed to be hermits' cells, the rectangular chambers passing for oratories. This Cornish example may be of similarly late date, or the rectangular chamber may be a later addition made in Christian times to an older hut then rebuilt and repaired." The window mentioned by Allcroft is certainly thought to be modern. Image courtesy of and © David Thomas.

     

Postcards of Bosporthennis Beehive Hut, Zennor, c.1930

Two real photographic postcard views of the beehive hut at Bosporthennis by Judges of Hastings. Sabine Baring-Gould, who penned the hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers', in describing the construction method of such structures states that "A circle was described in the grass, in diameter from 6 feet to 9 feet. Then a second circle, concentric, 3 feet beyond the first, that is to say, with a diameter 12 to 15 feet. Stones were set up on end in the ground where these circles had been described, and these uprights, their interstices filled in with moss and turf. After the walls had been carried to the height of four feet, the horizontal courses were drawn together inwards, so as to form a dome of overlapping slabs, and in the centre an opening was left to admit light and to serve as a smoke-hole, but sufficiently small to be easily closed with a stone or a wad of turf. On the south side of this bee-hive habitation a door was contrived by planting two jambs in the soil at right angles to the walls, standing about 2 feet 6 inches high, and placing over these a broad flat slab as lintel, on which the structure of the dome could be continued, and could rest."

Photograph of George Blight and Jim Thomas at Carn Brea, Illogan, 1895

The Iron Age fortifications on Carn Brea were excavated in 1895 by Thurstan Peter and a group of local labourers. This photograph shows two of those labourers, George Blight and the aforementioned Jim Thomas, and was taken at the time the excavations were taking place. The West Briton of the 4^th of April of that year commented: "The expectation seems to be that some ancient relics of the Britons or Romans may be unearthed. The only remains discovered up to the present are some stone heads that might have been spear heads. The explorations at present are three or four large pits about fifteen or sixteen inches deep and about twenty feet in diameter. They have been dug near the upright stones that seem to indicate the position of some old stone circles." Hut circles were indeed later found, thanks to Thurstan Peter's eagle-eyed young daughter, and a later edition of the same newspaper reported that two hundredweight of finds had been made on the site. Image courtesy of and © David Thomas.

Real photographic postcard of the Vugha, Porthcothan Valley, St Eval, c.1910

The cave at Porthcothan Valley is something of an enigma. The Reverend Hawker described how the cave had been used for smuggling, and there are suggestions that it was used as a hideout during the civil war. The cave is undoubtedly man-made, and Howard Balmer points out, in issue 51 of Meyn Mamvro, that prehistoric pick marks can be seen, best viewed from the rear of the chamber, and that the cave has very good acoustic properties; a quality thought to be of importance to the people of the prehistoric era. Howard also spotted a Neolithic axe at the Royal Cornwall Museum, and which had been discovered at this 'Long Vugha' in St Eval. The cave is marked as a fogou on the 1st edition 6 inch Ordnance Survey plan of 1888. This rare photographic postcard shows the small entrance to the 36 feet long chamber.

© Chris Bond 2004-6