Details

The monument includes two large round cairns, each with traces of a peripheral
setting of spaced stones, situated towards the south-west edge of Craddock
Moor on south-east Bodmin Moor.
These round cairns are centred 21m apart on a north-south axis. The northern
cairn survives as a circular mound, 13m diameter and up to 1.25m high,
composed of heaped small to medium stones and earth mostly beneath turf; a
circle of ground-fast stones, their tips up to 0.2m across projecting through
the turf and spaced 0.75m to 1m apart, surrounds the mound at a distance of 1m
from its base. Some limited stone extraction has produced hollows in the
mound's central and NW areas, extending to 0.75m deep, but failing to reach
ground level or to disrupt the mound's peripheral slope. The southern cairn
survives as a mound 10.5m in diameter and up to 1.5m high, also composed of
small to medium stones but largely turf-covered, with a flattened top into
which a small hollow has been dug, 2m diameter and 0.5m deep. Several small
hollows also occur around the mound's base, the result of small-scale stone
robbing. This cairn also has remains of a circle of small stones around the
mound base, 1.5m beyond it, but not surviving as completely as for the
northern cairn, visible as a continuous row only in the south, SE, north and
NNW sectors, with isolated stones in appropriate positions elsewhere. This is
an isolated pair of cairns situated in a broad saddle between the main plateau
of Craddock Moor and Tregarrick Tor to its SW. They lie towards the SW edge
of an extensive area of funerary and ceremonial monuments typical of the early
and middle Bronze Age (c.2000 - 1000 BC) on the Craddock and Rillaton Moors.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Bodmin Moor, the largest of the Cornish granite uplands, has long been
recognised to have exceptional preservation of archaeological remains. The
Moor has been the subject of detailed archaeological survey and is one of the
best recorded upland landscapes in England. The extensive relict landscapes of
prehistoric, medieval and post-medieval date provide direct evidence for human
exploitation of the Moor from the earliest prehistoric period onwards. The
well-preserved and often visible relationship between settlement sites, field
systems, ceremonial and funerary monuments as well as later industrial remains
provides significant insights into successive changes in the pattern of land
use through time. Round cairns are funerary monuments covering single or
multiple burials and dating to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They were
constructed as mounds of earth and stone rubble up to 40m in external diameter
but usually considerably smaller; a kerb of edge-set stones sometimes bounds
the edges of the mound. Burials were placed in small pits, or on occasion
within a box-like structure of stone slabs called a cist, let into the old
ground surface or dug into the body of the cairn. Round cairns can occur as
isolated monuments, in small groups or in larger cemeteries. Their
considerable variation in form and longevity as a monument type provides
important information on the diversity of beliefs, burial practices and social
organisation in the Bronze Age. They are particularly representative of their
period and a substantial proportion of surviving examples are considered
worthy of preservation.

These round cairns on Craddock Moor survive reasonably well despite the
limited actions of stone robbers, and they have not been archaeologically
excavated. Their peripheral stone circles are highly unusual in Cornwall,
being a more common feature further east on Dartmoor. The cairns' importance
is further enhanced by their situation within a wider grouping of differing
but broadly contemporary classes of funerary and ceremonial monuments on
Craddock Moor, demonstrating well the diversity and organisation of burial
practice and ritual during the Bronze Age.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Other
CAU/RCHME, The Bodmin Moor Survey, Unpubl. draft text. Ch.4, 1.3, fig 17
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1234.02,
Cornwall SMR entry for PRN 1234.03,
Spoken message: 25/4/1991, Information from P. Herring re the likely date of the structure,

Source: Historic England