On the other side of Brown Willy, the west side, at no great distance
from the source of the river Fowey, is another beehive hut, not
absolutely perfect, but nearly so; one course and the smoke-hole
coverer have fallen in on one side. The doors to these hovels are so
low that he who enters one must crawl on hands and knees. In the
beehive hut last mentioned the height in the middle is but three feet
six inches, so that those who tenanted it could not stand upright
inside. On Rough Tor, divided from Brown Willy by a valley, are three
or four more of these huts, and the flanks of the mountains are covered
with others, hundreds of them, in a more or less dilapidated condition.
Some of these were originally stone-roofed; others were not. In
connection with these remains of habitations are numerous relics of
interments at some distance from them, for our primeval population
always buried their dead away from the living. These consist of cairns,
covering stone coffins or kistvaens that have been for the most part
rifled by treasure-seekers. One has a somewhat pathetic interest, for
beside the large stone chest just outside the ring of upright stones
that encloses it is a child's cist, formed of four blocks of granite
two feet seven inches long, the covering-stone removed, and the
contents scattered to the winds. Near at hand also is the largest
circle of upright stones in Cornwall. The stones themselves are not
tall, and are much sunk in the boggy soil, but it is very perfect,
consisting of fifty-five stones, and 140 feet in diameter. On the
neighbouring height of Leudon is a logan rock that still oscillates
easily. The question naturally arises, Do these beehive huts actually
date back to prehistoric times? That is not a question we can answer
with certainty, for we know that the same methods of construction were
observed to a comparatively late period, and that in the Isles of Lewis
and Harris, in the Hebrides, precisely similar huts are even now
inhabited, and are certainly in many cases of recent construction. But
what is extremely interesting to find is the existence in Cornwall of
these beehive habitations of man exactly like those found in Scotland;
and in Cornwall, as in Scotland, associated with rude stone monuments
of pre-Christian times. In the Hebrides the beehive huts still occupied
are not stone-roofed. The roof is of straw, and is renewed every year
because of the value as manure of the peat smoke that saturates it. But
there remain earlier beehive huts in Lewis of exactly the same nature
as those in Cornwall. It is therefore by no means unlikely that both
belong to the primitive race that first colonised our isles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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