Mên-an-Tol

I've visited the Mên-an-Tol (the holed stone) many many times. As child growing up in nearby Penzance, we'd often take family drives out to Madron and Morvah to walk the moors there. In doing so you first pass the dolmen known as Lanyon Quoit and then the strange assembly of stones called the Mên-an-Tol. Walk on a bit further and you find the Mên Scryfa - an inscribed monolith - and then the Boskednan stone circle. It's a wonderful walk and I've been lucky to capture it on camera over the years. Sadly there are no childhood photos of me at the stones  (though there are photos at other Neolithic sites that I'll post at a later date). But there is this one of me (left), my two brothers and Mum in the long cart lane that leads to all the sites. 

The oldest photos I've found that I took date from around 1983 and, predictably, show people passing their bodies through the hole.

The Mên-an-Tol itself is a large flat, fairly round granite stone perched on its edge. Presumably there is a proportion of it buried below ground to give it stability. There is a large hole at its centre and local legend says that passage through the stone will cure a child of rickets (osteomalacia) or prevent the condition developing. For centuries, children with rickets were passed naked through the hole in the middle stone nine times. I've been through many times (never naked though). It was aso supposed to cure scrofula and has a reputation for curing back problems, which earned it the name of 'Crick Stone'. Another legend claims that if a woman passes through the holed stone seven times backwards during a full moon, she will soon become pregnant. 

The stones are also supposed to have a fairy or pisky guardian who can make miraculous cures. In one story, a changeling baby was put through the stone in order for the mother to get the real child back. Skipping along a few years you can here see my youngest - then aged around three - going through the stone. He's now in his mid-thirties. 

The monument today consists of four stones: two upright stones with the holed stone between them, and a fallen stone at the foot of the western upright. Antiquarian representations of the site differ in significant details and it is possible that the elements of the site have been rearranged on several occasions. William Borlase described the monument in the 18th Century as having a triangular layout, and it has been suggested that the holed stone was moved from its earlier position to stand in a direct alignment between the two standing stones. 

In the mid 19th Century, a local antiquarian JT Blight proposed that the site was in fact the remains of a stone circle. This idea was given additional support when a recent site survey identified a number of recumbent stones lying just beneath the modern turf which were arranged along the circumference of a circle 18 metres in diameter. The recumbent stones are somewhat irregularly spaced but the three extant upright stones have smooth inward facing surfaces and are of a similar height to other stone circles in this part of Cornwall. If this is indeed the origin of the site, the holed stone would probably have been aligned along the circumference of the circle and would have had a special ritual significance possibly by providing a lens through which to view other sites or features in the landscape, or as a window onto other worlds. 

There have also been suggestions that it may have been a component of a burial chamber or cist. There are instances of burial chambers close to stone circles, as at nearby Boskednan, and a barrow mound with stone cist has been identified to the north-east of the Mên-an-Tol, so it seems likely that the site was part of a more extensive ritual or ceremonial complex. 

Here are my three kids a few years later, taking their turn to go through the stone. 

You won't be surprised to hear that I can no longer fit through the circle very easily. And a few Cornish pasties don't help matters. But I do still visit quite regularly and here are some up-to-date photos from 2020.

Holed stones like this are something of a rarity and the holes are usually too small for a person to climb through. The only other Cornish holed stone of any size that I know of is at Gweek on the Lizard Peninsula. Known as the Tolvan Stone, it's also said to have curative properties but, as the hole is so small, only for very small children and babies. It's also in someone's back garden so it's polite to ask before visiting.

Meanwhile there's a good scattering of stones with small holes in them such as the five holed stones of Kenidjack Common ...

... and the Boleigh Stone that's now a gate post near to where the Merry Maidens stone circle stands.

These things are strangely fascinating aren't they? I wonder whether they evolved from our ancient ancestors' interest in naturally-formed holed stones? Known as witch stones or hagstones, they were popular talismans that were hung over a door for luck - much as people do with horseshoes. Some said that looking through the hole might allow you to see into other mystical worlds. Perhaps that's the origin of the larger stones - an attempt to magnify this power? In Cornwall these stones are called  milpreves, or adder stones due to a belief that they were made by snakes. In Robert Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England (1865) he wrote:

'The country people around the Land's End say that in old times no one could live in the low grounds, which were then covered with thickets, and these swarming with adders. Even at a much later period, in the summer-time, it was not safe to venture amongst the furze on the Downs without a milpreve. (I have never seen a milpreve; but it is described to me as being about the size of a pigeon's egg, and I am told that it is made by the adders when they get together in great numbers. Is it not pro­bable that the milpreve may be one of the madrepore corals-- millepore-- found sometimes on the beaches around Land's End?) A friend writes me, " I was once shown a milpreve; it was nothing more than a beautiful ball of coralline lime-stone, the section of the coral being thought to be entangled young snakes."'

I've always liked the form of hagstones and I can't resist picking one up and keeping it if I find one. The great sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth did the same and it's easy to see how these natural shapes might have inspired her work. Here's some of my collection and some of her pieces.

I was lucky enough to meet Hepworth when I was a boy ... 

But that's a story for another blogpost.