Mulfra Quoit () is a
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
dolmen in the county of
Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. It stands on Mulfra Hill to the north of the hamlet of
Mulfra.
Location
The Quoit is located west of
Penzance between
Porthmeor
Porthmeor (from kw, Porth Meur, meaning "large cove") is a hamlet that consists of two farms, Higher and Lower Porthmeor, in the parish of Zennor in Cornwall, England. It should not be confused with Porthmeor beach at St Ives. Higher Porthmeor ...
and
New Mill on the top of Mulfra Hill, from where you can look to the sea over the surrounding hills.
Structure
Mulfra Quoit is similar to
Chûn Quoit
Chûn Quoit is one of the best preserved of all Neolithic quoits (also called dolmens or cromlechs) in western Cornwall, United Kingdom.
Chûn Quoit is located in open moorland near Pendeen and Morvah. Standing on a ridge, near the much later ...
five kilometers away. The quoit has three 1.7m-high support stones, arranged in a U-shape 3.0m long and 1.7m wide, and open on one side. The capstone, which has slipped down, measures 3.2m by 3.0m, and is almost square; it has a weight of 5 tonnes. Since some of the stones that formed the chamber are missing, it is difficult to get an idea of its original form, but it is possible that four pillars supported the capstone slab as with Chûn Quoit. On the other hand, the capstone has a central bulge on its underside, which would give the stone a stable position on the existing three pillars. Mulfra Quoit was apparently covered by a mound, the remnants of which are still present
Research
In 1769 the antiquarian,
William Borlase
William Borlase (2 February 169631 August 1772), Cornish antiquary, geologist and naturalist. From 1722, he was Rector of Ludgvan, Cornwall, where he died. He is remembered for his works ''The Antiquities of Cornwall'' (1754; 2nd ed., 1769) ...
published a plan and a drawing of the quoit and described a 60 cm-high stone embankment, which encircled the dolmen with a diameter of 12m, of which, nothing can be seen today. Borlase also mentioned a further stone, which he thought was part of the capstone, but this stone no longer exists. The ground was covered with a 30 cm-thick soil, which Borlase thought was part of the original mound. In 1872 his descendant
William Copeland Borlase
William Copeland Borlase (5 April 1848 – 31 March 1899) was a British antiquarian and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 until 1887 when he was ruined by bankruptcy and scandal.
Early life
Borlase was born at Castl ...
examined an accumulation of stone in the centre of the dolmen, and undertook excavations which only yielded charred wood. W. C. Borlase refuted a local story that the dolmen had been damaged by a lightning strike in 1752, because his ancestor in 1749, had found it in much the same state as it is today.
Due to its poor state of conservation later writers gave it scant attention: Hencken in 1932 compared it to Chûn Quoit and simply called it "a very similar but less perfect chamber." In 1950
Glyn Daniel
Glyn Edmund Daniel FBA, FRAI (23 April 1914 – 13 December 1986) was a Welsh scientist and archaeologist who taught at Cambridge University, where he specialised in the European Neolithic period. He was appointed Disney Professor of Archa ...
did little more than mention the name of the quoit and classified it as a "typical rectangular" chamber, although he did provide a plan of the structure.
[Glyn Edmund Daniel, (1950), ''The Prehistoric Chamber Tombs of England and Wales'', Cambridge University Press]
Notes
External links
{{European Standing Stones
Dolmens in Cornwall
Archaeological sites in Cornwall
Penwith