Baker's Pit Nature Reserve

Baker’s Pit Nature Reserve is a 45-hectare wildlife site on the moorland of Noon Diggery in west Cornwall. It lies south of Castle-an-Dinas hillfort and Roger’s Tower, a 19th-century folly built within the Iron Age ramparts. The reserve sits on a gently sloping plateau of fine-grained granite that once supplied kaolinised clay for the china industry. Access comes only by minor roads off the B3311 or along footpaths, with no onsite parking. The landscape is open and exposed, offering little shelter from the prevailing south-westerly winds. To the south the reserve borders the Castle-an-Dinas quarry, adding to the sense of a working moorland edge. The site is recognised for its rare prehistoric features and early industrial remains. A 1979–80 survey by the Cornwall Committee for Rescue Archaeology found ten field systems, eight of them inside Baker’s Pit, dating from the Bronze Age to the Romano-British period. An early Bronze Age barrow stands on the skyline, flanked by low stony mounds that may be ritual monuments. The area was first recorded by the antiquary Borlase in 1748 as one of Cornwall’s earliest china clay workings. By 1873 Kelly’s Directory listed extensive works owned by Mr Baker of Amalveor, and the site remained active until the 1930s. The land was donated to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust in 2000 as a millennium gift by Imerys. Visitors walk over open moorland where the granite plateau drops gently towards the south-east. The Iron Age banjo enclosure, shaped like a ritual site from Wessex, is the reserve’s most distinctive feature. Remains of the old clay works and quarrying equipment lie scattered across the landscape. Castle-an-Dinas hillfort and Roger’s Tower can be seen to the north, while the skyline barrow marks a prehistoric focus. The reserve’s wide views stretch across West Penwith’s granite uplands, revealing a landscape rich in surviving prehistoric and medieval traces.