Boskednan stone circle

Boskednan stone circle stands on open upland in west Cornwall, about six and a half kilometres northwest of Penzance. It is a ring of granite stones set in grassland, roughly twenty-two metres across. Archaeologists think the original circle once held twenty-two upright stones around a sixty-nine-metre edge. Today only ten stones remain, six standing and four fallen or partly buried. The stones are rough local granite, most about a metre high, with the tallest nearly two metres. They are spaced unevenly, and the circle has no ditch, bank or central stone. The circle was built in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age by people of the Megalithic culture. William Borlase first recorded it in 1754, noting nineteen standing stones. Later excavations by William Copeland Borlase found a cist and a funerary urn nearby, both from the early Bronze Age. A round burial cairn lies close by and may once have been part of the same site. The wider area holds other ancient monuments, including the stones at Mên-an-Tol less than a kilometre to the southwest. Visitors reach the circle on foot from the road between Madron and Morvah. The uneven stones form a low ring in open countryside, giving a sense of the landscape’s long history. Nearby, the Mên-an-Tol stones add to the prehistoric setting. The site sits within a wider ceremonial landscape that includes burial mounds and other stone circles such as Boscawen-Un and the Merry Maidens. The rugged stones and wide views make it a quiet place to stand among the remains of a distant past.