Carwynnen Quoit Revisited

It was three years ago that we last wrote about Carwynnen Quoit, and the attempt by the Sustainable Trust to get it restored. Carwynnen Quoit is one of many quoits in the west of Cornwall, and is thought to date from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.

So what’s happened in the meantime? When I last visited the site a few years ago, all I saw was a pile of stones in the middle of a field. Physically, not much has changed on the ground in the intervening time.

However, the Trust now own the site and there is now a gated entrance to the field, with an information board showing a little of the history of the site, and the attempts to restore it to its former glory and setting. Although it had originally been hoped to be able to restore the quoit by 2013, the economic downturn has hit fundraising attempts hard, and there has had to be a rethink about the project.

Andy Norfolk, of the Sustainable Trust, said in a recent interview: “After a year’s fundraising in a difficult time, we’ve decided just to work on the archaeological side of the project for now and leave the restoration for another year, though we do intend to eventually put it back up.” As part of this archaeological approach, permission has recently been granted by English Heritage for an excavation at the site. A bid has been submitted by the Trust to the Heritage Lottery Fund for cash to fund a one-year project. This would pay for free courses and events, plus a film about sites in the vicinity of the quoit. It is hoped that a decision on funding will be delivered in June.

An education pack in PDF format about the quoit is available from the Trust web site. We wish them well in their continuing endeavours to restore the quoit.