An opinion piece from someone whose family heritage in the area extends back hundreds of generations:

Carn Brea, between Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, is an enormous hilltop site of historic significance.

With evidence of human habitation extending back over 5,000 years, this tor enclosure comprising extensive ramparts and a ditch and traces of 14 Neolithic longhouses, many pottery and flint artefacts including no less than 700 arrowheads have been discovered on this ancient hill.

Gold Gallo-Belgic coins in circulation over 2,000 years ago have been found on Carn Brea.

Home to an early Mediaeval Chapel thought to be dedicated to Saint Michael and later fashioned into a small castle and hunting lodge as well as a 90-foot-high Celtic Cross erected as a monument to Francis Bassett, 1st Baron de Dunstanville and Bassett, the hill is a local landmark and generations have spent leisure time exploring it and its mysterious wells and granite rock formations.

Valentine’s Series, Souvenir Post Card

Views of the local area from its upper parts, around 630 feet above sea level, are spectacular with a vista extending down to the Celtic Sea and Atlantic Ocean.

Carn Brea has been an inspiration to many writers and poets through the centuries. It is a place of myth and legend.

Cornwall is facing unparalleled destruction of its natural and human history which is overtaking the excesses of the tin and copper mining industrial boom of the 19th century.

Astonishing levels of house building, road widening and construction have seen the loss of archaeological sites of great antiquity and left farmers in tears at the loss of land through compulsory purchase that their families worked for generations, coastal development and so-called luxury modern mansions and holiday resorts accompanied by a vast increase in population has resulted in much being swept aside in the name of progress.

Environmental groups are increasingly expressing concern over the loss of fauna and natural habitats. Our seas suffer from alarming levels of human pollution rendering many unsafe to bathe in.

How sad it is to see a place of such huge historical and natural importance as Carn Brea, a place which has served as a refuge from the destruction, become nothing more than a dumping ground for fast food packaging, fly-tipping and even supermarket trolleys which have been pushed along lengthy trackways and abandoned on this extraordinary hill.

Dumped trolleys littering one of Carn Brea’s ancient trackways

My ancestors must surely be spinning in their graves!