Can’t see Carn Brea

“If there is a sinister place in Cornwall it is Carn Brea.”
— Ithell Colquhoun, The Living Stones

All photos by Helen Tanner

The day started raining as usual but in the afternoon it stopped and the weather turned mild yet misty; a whole blanket seemed to cover the Redruth area. We needed a walk and decided to go up Carn Brea hill. There’s something about colours and objects in the foreground when it’s misty that makes them pop out, and today was no exception. The greens of plants and the yellows of gorse and other flowers seemed luminious close-up, otherwise visability was really low; we couldn’t see the Basset monument on the top of the hill from the bottom.

Despite that, we somehow managed to discover more in the mist than we have in many similar yet clearer walks up the hill (I saw the ‘Cup and Saucer’ rock for the first time). It was as if the mist gave us special vision to see in different ways. After walking past the Basset monument we got separated by about 100 yards, but we could still just about see each other. Helen was walking along one path, me along a path I’d never seen before. I was vaguely walking towards a white stone wall in the distance that I’d also never seen before.

Suddenly two large female deer ran across my path. I gesticulated wildly to Helen, who had no idea what I was doing; then she saw the deer herself.

I continued walking towards the white stone wall and, upon getting close to it, found an opening and another path, which I walked along. It was now that I felt like I’d entered a parallel universe – in front of me was a large, flooded quarry. Not as big as the one in nearby Carn Marth, but still – I’d never seen it before. Everything felt and looked different. The mist made the hill feel like an expansive moorlands rather than a hilltop; it seemed to recede for miles into the distance. I saw another deer run away from me (later we were told it may have been the mist making them venture out. My cat does the same; usually quite timid and lazy by nature, in the mist he explores more, feeling himself to be invisible, perhaps).

I walked all around the quarry, admiring its various elements: water lilies here, reeds there, submerged trees blossoming over there. There was unusual bright orange and white fungi along the path.

I don’t really agree with the Colquhoun quote at the top of this post. She was writing in the 1950s, when they’d apparently been people falling down uncapped mine shafts to their deaths on the hill, and a deep well where three skeletons were once found. She writes in her book The Living Stones that she’d never actually walked up the hill.

There have been found remains of a Neolithic settlement on Carn Brea, a granite hill some 750 foot high, including coins, pottery and weapons. Over 100 people would have lived there around 6000 years ago.

There’s nothing eerie about the hill now, the constantly shifting light and colours – browns and yellows in winter, greens in summer – making it usually look quite lovely; the Basset monument a beacon seen for miles around. Unless there’s mist or fog.