Archaeological aerial reconnaissance was carried out over the area in the 1980s which suggested the remains of a prehistoric settlement comprising several dispersed hut circles. The tor is made of a granitic rock that has less autogenic alteration than other areas of Bodmin Moor due to some type of local anomaly. They are prominent from a distance and Christopher Tilley suggests they were intended to be seen as a group from the west and the east in order to 'analogically resemble or simulate tors'. Five cairns are located in a semi-circular arc along the ridge of Brown Gelly. Īt its foot lies Browngelly Downs, and the area has preserved various remains of hut circles, barrows and cairns. There is a trig point nearby, the site can be found slighty off the track that leads from the trig point if you walk to Men Gurta.Location of Brown Gelly on Bodmin Moor within Cornwallīrown Gelly is a tor, hill and ridge near Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor near Liskeard in Cornwall, UK. The site is almost unchanged compare with the sketch in Borlase's book although the area is slighty grown over. This species of monument is sometimes called an 'earth-fast Cromlech' sometimes a 'demi-dolmen' - Examples are not uncommon in Brittany and at Kerland bears a strong resemblance to the above. A small cairn also surrounded the adjacent monumentwhile barrows are scattered in abundance over the neighbouring downs.' It has the appearance of an imperfectly form Kist-Vaen and therefore should pehaps have been inserted at a previous page.Ī barrow of small stones from 30 to 40 feet in diameter lies around it, and a farmer mentioned the fact that an old man digging among them had once discovered something curious, but of what nature he could not remember. 'About 150 yards of the taller stone (Men Gurta) and upon equally high ground lies a flat stone of spar 9 feet 6 inches long by sis feet broad at its greatest breath resting on the ground at its northern edge and at its southern, diagonally upon a second stone 7 feet 6 inches long by 2 feet 6 inchesin breadth, and about the same in hieght above the ground. I had seen it marked on some old maps but two separate books on local sites said it no longer existed!įirst record by William Borlase in 1872 in his work Naenia Cornubiae. It consists of two huge slabs of stone of a similar type to the nearby menhirs and the quoit at Pawton. Only recently re-discovered near the Men gurta this 'kistvaen' or entrance grave.

Prehistoric Cornwall by John Barnatt