The light fades rapidly as I position myself within the Tregeseal stone circle. The granite stones appear luminous in this melancholy terrain, akin to pale, inquisitive ghosts assembled round to witness our actions. Rising before us, a expanse of withered heathland plants rises toward Carn Kenidjack, the sinister stone formation that commands the naked horizon. After dark, this moor is believed to be visited by pixies and demons, and on occasion Old Nick ventures forth in search of wayward spirits.
Untroubled by any otherworldly danger, we gaze seawards, toward the hazy shapes on the horizon that are the distant Isles of Scilly. The overcast break and a wave of sunlight falls over the islands. My guide, archaeoastronomer an authority on prehistoric astronomy, and I gasp. It is stunning a spectacle of nature which may have been witnessed by the community who constructed this circle in the Neolithic era.
A Timeless Solstice Terrain
We have met at Tregeseal to discuss the midwinter. The focus of her studies investigates the relationship of Cornwall’s prehistory with the heavens, and she describes the entire westernmost tip of Cornwall as an age-old solstice-aligned terrain. This, she notes, is because of the backbone of Cornish stone that travels south-west along the peninsula, aligned with the midwinter sunset. If, for example, you stand at the solstice by the mushroom-shaped quoit – the capstoned burial chamber atop the moors south of Morvah – you will see the sun descend over the rocky hill on the western horizon. And in all likelihood this is precisely as its Stone Age constructors intended.
"Where better to celebrate the rebirth of the daylight than on the western tip, which is oriented in the direction of the setting point of the sun on the year’s shortest day?"
The theory posits that this ancient monument was deliberately sited to allow people to watch the midwinter sun going down behind the Isles of Scilly. “Seen from here, Scilly is a liminal space. On a clear day with high pressure, the isles look accessible and just pop. On different days, they’re simply not there. The circle builders could have perceived Scilly as an otherworldly place, perhaps a spiritual domain, linked to the darkest day and the renewal of the light.”
Enigmatic Stones and Light Beams
We weave through the dusk-filled copper-colored moor past ancient tumuli and heaps of engine waste to a curious formation, which may be the UK’s only prehistoric alignment of perforated rocks. In contrast to the stone at Mên-an-Tol a few miles away, it’s not feasible to crawl through the perforated monoliths; these openings are scarcely big enough to insert my hand through and extremely close to the ground. Archaeologists remain puzzled.
A proposed explanation is that the alignment might have functioned as a kind of winter solstice countdown calendar, with the morning sun shining through the holes from autumn until December and creating varying shafts of light in the stones’ shadows. “Feeling the glow of that ray of sunlight in the frosty, dim moor gave me a visceral understanding of how Neolithic farmers might have marked midwinter,” she says.
Too many ancient sites are positioned to the dawn or dusk of the sun at the solstices for it to be a coincidence. It stands to reason that ancient cultivators, who depended on the sun for illumination, heat and the cultivation of crops, would want to track the sun’s journey. But in the modern era, the short days of this time of year still influences our well-being, and so we anticipate the winter solstice, that day of least light of all before the hours of light begin to grow again.
Persistent Stones and Modern Rituals
A chilly easterly is whipping, and haunting moaning emanate from invisible cows as I hike through damp clover to go and see the solitary monolith, standing guard as it has done for millennia above the peninsula’s south coast. It is just one of many of prehistoric stones that are solitary or in groups or rings all over the peninsula; less than a mile away are the well-known petrified dancers, maidens transformed into rock for violating the Sabbath. I think about how for ages the stone has remained here, enjoying its panorama of the coastal waters: where once ancient boats would have drifted, now cargo vessels and the Scilly ferry sail past.
"This midwinter event reinvigorates the old Cornish custom of guise dancing, with its elaborate masks and costumes, seasonal songs and music of pipe, drum and fiddle."
Christopher Morris’s hypnotic film, chronicling 12 months in the life of this stone, highlights the impact of its unmoving and mute existence in the dynamic landscape. “And I purposely started and ended the film with midwinter,” he explains, “because it is a moment of sheer anticipation – the pledge of the ending of gloom and a promising new year ahead.”
On the shortest day, all over this region, people will be marking the turning of the year by processing to stone circles, water sources, ancient fortifications and heritage sites. Excursions will be led to observe the sinking sun. Many will make their way to monoliths in a kind of practice of introspection and new beginnings. Later, crowds will flock into the town for the Montol festival, a solstice gathering that {dates only to|was established in|originated in
