Mên-an-Tol

In 1749 the site was first archaeologically investigated by William Borlase, who also drew a plan. This shows that the megaliths were not in a line like today, but formed an angle of about 135°. Borlase also reported that farmers had taken away some stones from the area. From him comes the first written record of the myths and rituals. In the 19th Century the local antiquary John Thomas Blight published several drawings of the site, and made the first suggestion that the stones could be the remains of a stone circle. In 1872 William Copeland Borlase, a descendant of the earlier Borlase, gave a more detailed description of the area. In 1932 Hugh O'Neill Hencken wrote the first modern…

The Mên-an-Tol consists of three upright granite stones: a round stone with its middle holed out with two standing stones to each side, in front of and behind the hole. The two side stones are both about 1.2 metres high. The westernmost stone was moved and brought into a straight line with the other two stones sometime after 1815. The holed stone is roughly octagonal in outline. It is 1.3 metres wide and 1.1 metres high; the circular hole is 0.5 m in diameter. The only other holed stone in Cornwall of this type is the Tolvan holed stone which can be seen in a garden near Helston. There is one other standing stone nearby, and six recumbent stones, some of which are buried. A cairn exists as…