The weather was various shades of atmospheric as we came to Carn Gluze barrow on the Penwith peninsula in Cornwall. To be honest, it was foggy as hell. Let’s look on the bright side, it wasn’t actually raining at the time.The subdued light and damp really made the heather glow
but it didn’t really make for an inspiring picture of the site – a nearby derelict tine mine was lost in the misty gloom
Hardy Outward Bound types were jogging in the distance along the South-West Coast path, on their way to Cape Cornwall
English Heritage’s write-up drips with disdain for the ‘improvements’ wrought by William Copeland Borlase in the Victorian era.
After the excavation, Borlase built stone walls to display important features of the barrow, creating a circular passage between the central mound and apron. This radically altered the appearance of the site. Some features, such as the central cists, went missing after the walls were built.
These later alterations make the barrow hard to understand – the idiosyncratic form of the monument today has little do with its original appearance, which would have been much more dramatic.
I think we can summarise that as ‘he buggered it up’ and they have a point, it’s a pretty rum looking barrow now. It’s quite big and probably hs a striking view over the Atlantic on a clear day. The National Trust have warnings about mine shafts, and the whimsical story that the rocks in the picture, originally called Brisons Rocks are also known as ‘General de Gaulle in his bath’.
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