super pic
by mike winters
Cromlechs/Quoits
Originally surrounded in earth, weather and farmers from generations previous to our own have exposed the stones (megaliths);
each tomb held as many as twenty bodies, with various implements and personal artefacts to take with them.
Visitors from Mediterranean lands came to our shores
and brought their burial customs with them in the late Stone Age and early Bronze Age.
These structures were not easily formed, as they required immense effort and skill to erect and set the cap stones,
which in some cases were massive. The earth mound was rounded, sometimes with an entrance tunnel , closed off with stones.
Lanyon collapsed in 1815 and was re-erected in 1824, but the uprights are now smaller in height than they once were;
Doctor Borlase stated in 1759 that a man could have sat on horseback and have been able to have ridden under it.
The earth mound is estimated to have been 40 x 90 feet.
The cap stone is 19 feet in length.
In 1905 the stone stood just 5ft 8 inches off the ground.
