ENGLAND’S PAGAN LANDSCAPE : In Cornwall, intimate encounters with mysterious ancient markers and monoliths left by pre-Christian inhabitants

I go to Penwith, at the southwestern tip of England, to take a journey back in time. It is there, in the Cornwall district near the Land’s End cape, that I walk amid the earliest evidence of humans in Britain.

From massive, free-standing monoliths to burial chambers dating back 4,000 years, Penwith contains the greatest concentration of ancient monuments in the British Isles.

All told, there are hundreds: quoits (two or more upright stones covered by a capstone), barrows (mounds of earth used for burials), single upright stones, circles of standing stones and an intriguing round stone with a hole in the middle called the Men-an-Tol (Cornish for “stone of the hole”) that archeologists believe represents the goddess of nature worshiped by the agrarian people who erected it.

While no single monument in Cornwall is of the scale or magnitude of Stonehenge or Avebury, England--along with the Egyptian Pyramids, the most famous stone monuments in the world--they offer important advantages. They are not roped off, as is Stonehenge. And it is possible to walk up to the stones and touch them, making a tangible, personal connection

Destination: England with the people who erected them. I can do this alone or with a small group, staying as long as I like without being hounded by hordes crowding in for one more picture. Importantly, many of the Cornwall sites are still undisturbed; only the forces of nature have changed them over the centuries.

The ancient people who carted and, in some cases, carved these stones were farmers, and the clues to this lifestyle are in the monuments. From them we learn that these Neolithic (or New Stone Age) people revered nature and worshiped a variety of gods and goddesses who primarily represented the elements (earth, sky, water) and the dynamics of fertility.

Most of the stones of this region date back to the Neolithic period (4000-2000 BC) but some are from the Bronze Age that began in Cornwall about 2200 BC. The Bronze Age was a boom period for Penwith because tin and copper, the two main alloys for making bronze, had been discovered there. Since bronze became the primary metal for everything from weapons to jewelry, the tin and copper of Penwith were in great demand. By 1500 BC, trading had become commonplace with other parts of Britain, with what is now the Brittany region of France and even with the Mediterranean states.

When I walk along ancient Tinners’ Way, a track that begins a few miles west of St. Ives and for almost 4,000 years connected the old tin mines, I can imagine the landscape peopled by miners, traders, merchants selling exotic goods from faraway lands and villages developing around pre-Christian, and later around Christian religious centers. It is all mostly gone today, though ruins of the tin mines dot the landscape, stark and barren against the sea.

Shaped like a claw reaching west out into the Atlantic, Penwith is a part of Great Britain that seems more like Brittany than England, probably because 10,000 years ago this section of Britain was connected by a land bridge to Brittany. (Elements of the Cornish language still retain hints of Breton.) Less than 10 miles across from St. Ives on the north coast to St. Michael’s Bay in the south, and less than 20 miles from St. Ives to Land’s End, the westernmost point of England, the whole peninsula could fit neatly into an area about the size of Palos Verdes.

*

I particularly love it in the fall, although I have traveled to Penwith in all seasons over the past 15 years, sometimes with college students or colleagues and friends, but often alone. The summer crowds are gone, the pubs are back in the hands of the locals, the weather can be dry and brisk and the heather glows purple and lavender across the moors.

Although my favorite village in Penwith is St. Ives (reachable by train from London or, of course, by car), other villages to use as bases for exploring the area are Penzance and Mousehole, to the south, and Marazion near St. Michael’s Mount, across Mount’s Bay from Penzance. But it is St. Ives that I consider my Cornish home.

I first came here when I was studying Virginia Woolf in school. Woolf spent her summers here as a girl and later set her novel “To the Lighthouse” here.

The Godrevy Lighthouse of the novel is still very much a part of the St. Ives scene, which also includes a local version of London’s Tate Gallery. Opened in 1993, the gallery is owned by the Cornwall County Council, managed by the Tate and housed in a magnificent structure facing the sea at Porthmeor Beach. (Porth is the Cornish word for cove.)

About five miles west of St. Ives are the Men-an-Tol, a circle of standing stones, a quoit and barrows. Historians believe that any cluster of monuments in so small an area indicates that its erectors considered it sacred ground. If this is so, then pagan people--perhaps from Ireland or even Crete--may have traveled to these sites as pilgrims in later times journeyed to Canterbury. How would they know the way from site to site? Could the free-standing stones themselves have directed them to ritual sites such as circles or quoits?

To test the theory that the free-standing stones were markers pointing toward important ritual sites, I drove west four miles out of St. Ives along B3306 past the village of Zennor to a T-shaped junction, where a sign indicated that the road to the left would lead to the village of Bosullow. I turned left and drove less than a mile until I came to a building identified as the Men-an-Tol studio. I parked across the road.

My plan was this. I knew where the Men-an-Tol was, so I would start there. Then I would backtrack, using single standing stones for directions, assuming they were marker stones directing me to the next ritual site. If the theory proved correct I would be able to follow the path made by the single stones from one stone to the next visible stone until I was led to a stone circle, a barrow or a quoit. I would not use a map, compass or binoculars; the stones alone would be my guides.

A short path lead from the road near my car to the Men-an-Tol. It was a remarkable site. The stone is about four feet high and the hole is large enough for a body to pass through. Two standing stones of about four feet flank it. The Men-an-Tol, which may date back to 2000 BC, has been used as a healing center for at least hundreds of years, and folklore has it that pilgrims to the site needed only pass through the hole three times to be cured of disease or infertility.

*

It was time to try out the directional marker theory. I stood to one side and looked for a marker stone. There it was, in the middle of a crop, beyond a field of grazing sheep: a single standing stone. I was momentarily thrilled until, upon closer inspection, I noticed markings on it. They read RIALOBRAN CVNOVAL FIL (Latin for Rialobran, son of Cunoval). It was the Men Scrypha, a memorial to a Celtic warrior named Rialobran who fought for the Romans in the 6th Century. This was much too late for the Bronze Age markers I was seeking. Then it occurred to me that perhaps the stone had been there since Neolithic times and the Romans had marked it with 6th-Century graffiti. The test would be if this stone directed me to another.

I scanned the horizon again. Standing alone to the south was a tall, rather irregular stone. I walked to it. While the Men Scrypha was about six feet tall, this stone was more than eight feet. Interestingly, it was positioned so that I could not have seen it from the Men-an-Tol even if I had known where to look. It was only visible from the Men Scrypha, which I could see clearly now in the center of the sheep field. Proof enough, it seemed. On the top of this rise the wind was coming off the sea behind me, so I crouched in the lee of the stone, rested my head in a notch in its side and looked off into the distance. There, not more than a few hundred yards away, was what I hoped to see: a stone circle. I ran toward it.

It was a true circle, perfectly round, consisting of 19 stones aligned according to size, with the smallest--which were about three feet tall--on one end, gradually increasing in size to four feet at the other end. I stood in the center and looked back toward the marker stone. It was perfectly aligned on the cusp of the hill, leaning in the direction of this circle.

As I looked around me I was astonished. Within feet of the circle were two perfectly paired standing stones, other single stones and burial barrows (long, narrow mounds of earth) that had remained for the past 4,000 years, undisturbed by humans. They were now covered by a short prickly heather serving as food for a few hearty sheep, my only companions. The perfectly round circle--the sacred ritual site--was in the center of these sites.

I knew then that this was why I had come to Cornwall. From my vantage point it could easily have been 2000 BC. All I could see were the standing stones, the circle of stones, the barrows and a few birds circling overhead. I felt at peace. No one will ever know for certain what rituals and special rites were performed here, but we can know our own experiences.

My reverie was interrupted, as so often happens in Cornwall, by a change in the weather. Clouds came scudding in off the sea, and the wind returned. I buttoned up my wax cloth coat and started back, or so I thought.

Off in the distance just below the ruins was another stone. It was where it should not have been, precariously perched on the steep side of a hill. Since I was following markers, I decided to go to it, but as I did, I was caught in a sudden cloudburst of rains driven horizontally by ocean winds. The texture of the Penwith soil changed quickly from a dry footing to a mucky, slippery clay.

Just as I reached the stone, I lost my footing and slid down the side of the hill a hundred feet or so. I ended up unhurt, covered with mud and, lo and behold, staring at Lanyon Quoit--the most magnificent quoit I’ve ever seen.

Lanyon Quoit is a five-foot-tall tripod covered by a capstone. To avoid the rain, I took shelter under it and as I rested, I noticed how quiet the world around me had become. The rain ceased, the sun again shone with a brightness I have experienced only in Cornwall and I saw stretching away from the quoit the remnants of a large burial barrow.

Was this, too, part of the entire complex? Were all the sites connected to one another? I realized that I was only a few hundred yards away from where I had started at the Men-an-Tol. I had made an unwitting loop, an experience that convinced me that all of these sites were connected. The burial mounds, the ritual centers and the circles and quoits, all seemed to form a complex network meant to pay homage to the dead, but also to show reverence for life and for nature itself. In my own way I had made what must have been an ancient pilgrimage, and one that can still be made in Cornwall.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK / Cornwall’s Pagan Places

Getting there: From LAX fly nonstop to London on American, United, Virgin Atlantic, British Air, Delta, Air New Zealand. Continental and Northwest fly direct, with one stop but no change of planes. Lowest advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $875.

If driving from London’s Heathrow Airport, take the M25 north to the M4. Then take the M4 west to just beyond Bristol and go southwest on the M5 to Exeter. Just beyond Exeter, take A30 west to Cornwall. At Hayle, leave the A30 (it continues on to Penzance) and take A3074 into St. Ives. Total driving distance is about 320 miles. Allow 1-1 1/2 days for travel.

Trains to Cornwall run eight times daily from London’s Paddington Station to Penzance. For St. Ives, change at St. Erth. Round trip about $120. For more information, call BritRail, telephone (800) 677-8585.

Where to stay: Pedn-Olva Hotel, Porthminster Beach, St. Ives, Cornwall, England, TR26 2EA. Rates $115-$145 per night, depending upon view and time of year, double occupancy, including breakfast. Rooms have harbor or bay view, including Godrevy Lighthouse. Hotel features full dining facilities, sun terrace, heated swimming pool and beach access; short walk to village; from the United States tel. 011-44-1736-796-222.

Porthminster Hotel (Best Western), The Terrace, St. Ives, Cornwall, England, TR26 2BN. Rates $150-$185 per night, depending upon view and time of year, double occupancy, including breakfast. Full service hotel, beautiful views, heated swimming pool, beach access; tel. 011-44-1736-795-221, fax 011-44-1736-797-043.

References: Maps and books may be purchased at bookstores in St. Ives or other villages and towns in Cornwall, as well as at large bookstores throughout Britain.

Map-Ordnance Survey, Landranger Series, No. 203 for Land’s End, The Lizard and the Isles of Scilly.

“Cornwall Walks,” by John Brooks, (Ordnance Survey, about $7); “Journey to the Stones” by Ian Cooke (Men-an-Tol Studio, Cornwall, about $7.50); “Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall and Scilly,” by Craig Weatherhill (Alison Hodge, about $11.50).

Museums: Tate Gallery, St. Ives, Porthmeor Beach; November through March, open Sunday 1-5 p.m., closed Monday, Tuesday 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and open bank holidays 11 a.m.-5 p.m. April through October, open Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Saturday 11 a.m.-7 p.m., and bank holidays 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission: adults $4.50, seniors $2.75, children under 11 with an adult free; includes admission to the Barbara Hepworth Museum in St. Ives.

For more information: St. Ives Tourist Information Centre, The Guildhall, Street-an-Pol, St. Ives, Cornwall, England TR26 2DS; tel. 011-44-1736-796-297.

British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York, NY 10176-0799, tel. (800) 462-2748.

--L.N.F.