Boscawen Un Stone Circle - St. Buryan, Cornwall

Boscawen-un rewards the persistent circle seeker who manages to find this, my favourite of the Cornish stone circles. After finding a suitable place to park the car, the visitor has to wade chest deep through bracken and gorse and ever present airborne stinging beasties down the hillside to the clearing that is the home to this fine fairy ring of 19 granite blocks and it's titled centre spire, looking like some kind of prehistoric sundial. Aubrey Burl speculates that this two metre proto-gnomen could have stood here before the circle itself, as this whole area near the tip of Cornwall is heavily populated with Bronze Age standing stones that must have been sacred places and often have circles built close-by. It would be nice to think that this stone was meant to stand at 45 degrees as some kind of pointer, in fact it's present angle was caused by treasure seekers in the past digging under the stone in search of the pot of gold said to be buried there. The circle itself has a diametre of around 24 metres, the stones standing between 1 and 1.4 metres tall. These are fairly regularly spaced and dressed and appear uniform until a stone in the Western arc is examined more closely, and reveals itself to be a clearly special block beautifully rich in quartz.
During Medieval times this circle was recorded as being one of the three major Druidic meeting places, and even today it continues to be the place of worship of the modern Cornish Gorsedd.