Brown Willy

Brown Willy stands on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, the highest point in the county at 420 metres. Seen from the north it looks like a sugarloaf cone, but from closer it spreads into a long multi-peaked ridge. The hill’s name comes from the Cornish Bronn Wennili, meaning ‘hill of swallows’, though Henry Jenner thought it might mean ‘highest hill’. Oliver Padel has also suggested the swallow connection, and the spelling has changed many times since the 13th century. Local people have always called it Brown Willy, and a campaign to restore the Cornish name met with little support. The moor around it is dotted with tors and streams, and the River Fowey begins nearby. The hill draws walkers who treat it as one of the UK’s best-loved high points. Every New Year’s Day a race starts and finishes at Jamaica Inn, the coaching inn made famous by Daphne du Maurier. Brown Willy and Rough Tor were already listed in a 1920s travel guide as places with ‘wildly grand, rugged and bleak’ scenery. The Aetherius Society regards the hill as a sacred mountain and gathers each 23 November for ‘Charging Day’, when they believe the sun aligns with special rocks. The hill’s name has also inspired a comedy film about two former school-friends on a stag do. At the summit two man-made cairns sit beside an Ordnance Survey trig point. William Copeland Borlase described these Bronze Age mounds as cone-shaped tumuli, though no burials have been found. Folklore claims an ancient Cornish king lies beneath one cairn, and archaeologists have dated similar cairns on Bodmin Moor to between 2162 and 1746 BC. The hill is also linked to Rough Tor by claimed alignments with the autumn equinox sunrise. Lower slopes show traces of seventeen seasonally used houses, many built to keep the summit in sight.