The Trippet stones or Trippet stones circle is a stone circle located on Manor Common in

Blisland Blisland ( kw, Blyslann) is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is approximately five miles northeast of Bodmin. According to the UK census 2001, 2001 census, the parish had a populatio ...

, north northeast of Bodmin on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, UK. The Stripple stones are nearby.

Description

The circle is situated on nearly level ground and has a diameter of . It is made of eight upright

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

stones with four others that have fallen. The stones are spaced on average around apart, the highest measuring . The fallen stones are and long. William Lukis suggested there may originally have been as many as twenty-six

menhir A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. They can be found ...

s that suffered at the hands of stone-breakers.

Aubrey Burl Harry Aubrey Woodruff Burl HonFSA Scot (24 September 1926 – 8 April 2020) was a British archaeologist best known for his studies into megalithic monuments and the nature of prehistoric rituals associated with them. Before retirement he was P ...

suggested twenty eight, set up on opposite facing pairs and suggests the name represents the folklore belief that the stones were girls punished for ''tripping lightly'' on Sabbath. The Stripple stones are visible around eastwards over boggy ground. John Barnatt said that the Trippet stones ''"may replace (or complement) the Stripple stones as part of an overall building programme in the western half of Bodmin Moor"''.

Archaeology

The Trippet stones were examined in 1908 by H. St. George Gray who excavated the nearby Stripple stones in 1905 and found a few

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

flakes and an entrance from this facing southwest, directly towards the Trippet stones.Gray, H.S., The Stone Circles of East Cornwall. — In Archaeologia, LXI, 1908, pp. 1–60 (8 pis.; 6 figs.), 1908.

Alignments

Norman Lockyer Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920) was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen, he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the f ...

visited the site in 1907 and suggested the date of the circle's construction to be around 1700 BC by calculating an alignment of

Arcturus , - bgcolor="#FFFAFA" , Note (category: variability): , , H and K emission vary. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the third-brightest of the ...

over

Rough Tor Rough Tor (), or Roughtor, is a tor on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, United Kingdom. The site is composed of the tor summit and logan stone, a neolithic tor enclosure, a large number of Bronze Age hut circles, and some contemporary monuments. Top ...

. Lockyer also noted an eleven degree alignment between Trippet stones and Leaze stone circle, but suggested if this alignment were to mean anything, it would have to be with regards stellar rising alignments as it is outside of the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

's path.

Literature

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References

External links

Cornwall's Archaeological Heritage – field guide to accessible sites – Trippet stones

Illustrated entry in the Megalithic Portal

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Trippet Stones Bodmin Moor Stone circles in Cornwall