Crig-a-mennis: a Bronze Age Barrow at Liskey, Perranzabuloe, Cornwall

Abstract

The mound traditionally known as ‘Crig-a-mennis’ was excavated in September and October, 1957 on behalf of the Ministry of Works. Although a scheduled site, it was threatened with destruction owing to the clearing of mine dumps from the field where it was situated.The site lies just off the main Perranporth-Truro road (fig. 1, map 3) on the south-east slope of Liskey Hill, about one mile south-east of the modern resort of Perranporth in the parish of Perranzabuloe (O.S. National Grid: 757528) and was originally one of a group of barrows in the area, few traces of which now remain.In the course of four weeks of excavation the mound was stripped and nothing of it now remains. The finds were placed, after restoration by the writer, in the Museum of the Royal Institution of Cornwall in Truro by kind permission of Lord Vyvyan on whose land the barrow stood.The site revealed a composite bell-barrow surrounded by an irregular causewayed ditch. A central stone-heap covering a fire and an oval pit was overlain by a turf and soil mound, stone reveted on the north and west, with a narrow berm between revetment and ditch. A trench-ramp cut into the natural rock on the east led into the ditch from outside and up towards the central area. Two finely decorated Ribbon-handled Urns were found inverted on the periphery of the turf stack and contemporary with it, one containing charcoal, the other burnt flints, biconical terracotta beads of Wessex type and a small terracotta cone. A miniature cup, five flint flakes and a flint core, and the possible remains of a wooden tool were also found, while a number of pits and charcoal patches suggest an elaborate ritual. Only one main phase of barrow construction was discernible—though this was capable of some sub-division—and the finds date the whole to c. 1400 B.C. or slightly later. Subsequent activity on the site, probably during the Iron Age, is attested by quern fragments, a slate ‘comb’ and an iron object.