A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



are known ; there is a noticeable specimen on the crest of headland at Kenidjack 

 in St. Just ; but probably many more would be discovered by a systematic 

 search on the moors and hills. 



They vary very much in size ; from 14 ft. 1 up to 20 are the usual limits; 

 but some are as much as 40, and even 60 ft. in diameter. 2 Some of those 

 on Carn Brea are as small as 8 ft., while others are as much as 20 ft. 



A thorough examination of those on Carn Brea in Illogan was made by 

 Mr. Thurston C. Peter in 1895. Several of the huts were so constructed 

 that two or more sides were formed of naturally-placed boulders, and most of 

 these had in them hearths or cooking holes or both. These cooking holes 

 were pits sunk into the ground floor of the hut, generally square, but one was 

 triangular. One was lined with stone, a single flat stone on each of three 

 sides, the fourth built up with small stones. The wood ash which came from 

 these cooking holes was of oak, birch, hazel, and alder. All the ' finds ' from 

 these huts are in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall at Truro, 

 and include a large number of well-made flint arrow-heads, some flint celts and 

 scrapers, spindle whorls, two pieces of ground flint, a bronze ring, and a silver 

 denarius of A.D. 70. Apparently no articles of iron of any sort were found. 8 



This fact, although only negative evidence, combined with their evidently 

 superior structure and design would seem to show that the ' hut-clusters ' of 

 Cornwall are of a more recent date than these hut-circles. The hut-clusters, of 

 which perhaps the best preserved is at Chysauster in Gulval, 4 consist of several 

 rooms or huts within one enclosing wall. The walls are faced with stone on 

 the inside and are in some cases still standing 5 or 6 ft. above the floor level of 

 the contained hut or room. The outside of the wall is an earth bank, and the 

 whole is very thick and solid. Two of these enclosures at Chysauster have 

 been examined, and they are both laid out on much the same ground plan. 



In the course of the exploration of the first Mr. W. C. Borlase found that 

 some of the huts or rooms were roughly paved, and more than one contained a 

 hearth. He found black wheel-made pottery in fragments, stone mullers, 

 millstones, and a piece of insufficiently smelted tin in the condition locally 

 known as ' Jew's house tin.' B The second cluster was excavated by the 

 Penzance Antiquarian Society in 1897. Here, too, was rough paving, and in 

 the centre of one hut a large flat stone lying level on the ground, having in it 

 a circular pit, and in the pit a round stone about 5 inches in diameter. There 

 were also found the upper half of a stone hand-mill in good preservation, 

 large quantities of burnt furze wood, fragments of at least twelve vessels of 

 coarse pottery, several hones, and a lump of the stone from which they were 

 made, two very small pieces of rusty iron, and several rounded pebbles. 6 All 

 these objects are now in the Museum of the Society. Mr. W. C. Borlase 

 records that he had three Roman coins, 'third brasses' of A.D. 265 to 282, 

 which were part of a hoard found at or near the hut-cluster at Bodinnar in 

 Sancreed. 7 After Chysauster the best specimens of these ' hut-clusters ' are 

 to be seen at Bosullow in Madron. Some excavations have been made in 

 these, but not on an extensive scale ; and nothing has been found except 



1 Journ. Roy. Inst. Cormv. ix, pt. iii (1888), 349. Vestiges, 19 and plan. 



* Maclean, op. cit. i, 24. s Journ. Roy. Inst. Cornio. xiii, pt. i (1895), 93. 



4 Edmonds, op. cit. 50 ; Lukis, op. cit, 19 and plan ; Vestiges, 12. 



5 Bateman, Vestiges, 15. 6 Tram. Penz. Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Soc. (1893-8), 107. 

 3 Bateman, op. cit. 5. 



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