Boscawen-Un

Boscawen-Un stands in open farmland near St Buryan in Cornwall, a Bronze Age stone circle of nineteen upright stones arranged in an ellipse. A single quartz stone and a leaning central pillar mark its centre, and a wide western gap may once have been an entrance. The circle sits on gently rolling land close to the A30 road between Penzance and Land’s End, with distant views of the sea. The site holds special meaning for Cornish culture. In 1928 Henry Jenner founded Gorsedh Kernow here during the Cornish language revival. A Welsh triad from the 6th century already called it one of the three great poetic assemblies of Britain, linking it to older bardic traditions. Archaeologists have found traces of a burial mound and urns nearby, showing it was used long after its first erection. Visitors walk among the standing stones and see the quartz slab in the south-west. The leaning central stone bears a rare axe-shaped carving visible best at summer solstice sunrise. Nearby lie the Merry Maidens circle and the Pipers standing stones, while the Penwith landscape stretches to the horizon.