A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



Rith (red down) preserves the memory of a bloody conflict. The first 

 authentic reference to Dawns Men is but a late one, that of William 

 Hals (1685-1736), and he, with his usual inaccuracy, probably confounds 

 it with Boscawen-un, when he talks of a centre stone. Dr. Borlase 

 (1754) * noted nineteen stones, but says nothing of a central one ; Britton 

 and Brayley (1801) 2 mention the same number ; but by 1827 the circle 

 had experienced reverses, for William Cotton records sixteen stones 

 standing and two fallen ; 3 he must have overlooked one, since Richard 

 Edmunds, in 1850, speaks of three out of nineteen stones being 

 prostrate. 4 Lukis and Borlase give a plan and description of the circle, 

 and remark that the proprietor, Lord Falmouth, had restored to the ring 

 a stone which had been removed. 5 Certainly the circle has been well 

 taken care of and is in very perfect condition now. 



Both at Boscawen-un and Dawns Men there exists a gap in the peri- 

 phery wide enough to take another stone, and yet our earliest records only 

 mention nineteen stones. The Dartmoor Exploration Committee were 

 met by the same problem at Whitemoorstone Down, where the circle has 

 nineteen stones and a gap, in this case on the north side. Their Report 

 says that they removed the turf and searched the sub-soil for the socket, 

 or pit-hole, of another stone ; but having failed to find any they con- 

 cluded that the gap was intentional. 6 No such search has been made in 

 these Cornish circles, and if made it might be inconclusive, since Dawns 

 Men at least has been ploughed and the hedge at Boscawen-un passed 

 through the gap itself; ploughing however is unlikely to go deeper 

 than a foot and would not in that case destroy traces of a missing stone. 

 It may be urged that there is a lack of uniformity in the position of 

 these gaps, but we find the same in the well-marked entrances of the 

 Cumbrian circles. 



TREGASEAL 



* Beauties of England and Wales, ii. 496. 



1 Ant. ofCornw., (ed. i),pp. 169, 170, 183. 



3 Illustrations of Stone Circles, pp. 21-2, pi. i. 



4 Trans. Penzance Nat. Hist, and Antiq. Sue. old ser. i. 3812. 

 4 Prehistoric Monuments, pp. i, 21, pi. i. 



6 Report of Devonshire Association (1896), pp. 182-3 5 ('897) pp. '47 -8. 



384 



