Leskernick Hill
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Leskernick Hill is on
Bodmin Moor Bodmin Moor () is a granite moorland in north-eastern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is in size, and dates from the Carboniferous period of geology, geological history. It includes Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, and Rough To ...
in
Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
, UK. It is 329m high and has grid reference SX183803. Leskernick Hill is within the
Cornwall AONB The Cornwall National Landscape (formerly the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) covers in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom; that is, about 27% of the total area of the county. It comprises 12 separate areas, designated under the Nat ...
(Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) as part o
Area 12: Bodmin Moor
in the parish of Altarnun. It lies in an area of moorland that is common land. Its parent hill is
Brown Willy Brown Willy (possibly meaning "hill of swallows" or meaning "highest hill") is a hill in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The summit, at above sea level, is the highest point of Bodmin Moor and of Cornwall as a whole. It is about northwest ...
and it is within sight of
Rough Tor Rough Tor (), or Roughtor, is a tor on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The site comprises the tor summit and logan stone, a Neolithic tor enclosure, many Bronze Age hut circles, and some contemporary monuments. Toponymy In ...
and other local tors


Archaeological sites of Leskernick

On the south and western slopes of Leskernick Hill are 2 Bronze Age settlements, with associated field enclosures, small cairns, a cist and a propped stone, all of which were designated in October 2019 by
Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...
as
Scheduled Monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage, visu ...
1464798. It is described in the Cornwall County Council Historic Environment Record as "an extraordinarily well preserved Bronze Age settlement comprising at least 44 round houses set within a very extensive field system covering approximately 21 hectares. The site is located on the extremely stony south-west facing slopes of Leskernick Hill. The surface stones are known as “clitter”, a feature common to the granite outcrops of the South West and associated with geological processes taking place on the fringes of glaciated areas during transitional phases of the Ice Age. As the surrounding areas are relatively stone-free, the siting of the settlement in this area is assumed to be deliberate." Associated with the Leskernick settlement site are 2
stone circles A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being bu ...
and a
stone row A stone row or stone alignment is a linear arrangement of megalithic standing stones set at intervals along a common axis or series of axes, usually dating from the later Neolithic or Bronze Age.Power (1997), p.23 Rows may be individual or groupe ...
/alignment in the valley below:
Leskernick South Stone Circle
- Scheduled Monument 1459490. "The circle consists of 23 granite stones set in a circle of approximately 30m diameter"
Leskernick North Stone Circle
- Scheduled Monument 1460916. "The stone circle comprises a recumbent stone (4m long) a little north of the circle’s centre with 25 stones in an almost-perfect circle approximately 23m in diameter£
Leskernick Stone Alignment
- Scheduled Monument 1461019. "The alignment is 317m long and comprises 47 small, low, square-topped stones, all except two lying, and mostly less than 0.5m high. There are three large recumbent stones at the western terminal. The stones are fairly evenly-spaced, 4m to 5m apart" The stones of the circles and row were re-exposed in 2016, as they had become overgrown with turf. The work was undertaken by the Time Seekers Clearance Group volunteers, under the supervision of Historic England's area Heritage At Risk Officer. As part of their work, the volunteers recommended the three sites were designated as Scheduled Monuments, which was completed in October 2019. As described by the volunteers:
"From the very moment we arrived at Leskernick we felt we were in a special place – a place of wonder and great importance. It is enclosed by a series of hills, ridges and tors in all directions and just shouts out that importance. The landscape is breathtaking. To stand on the top of Leskernick Hill you can’t help but feel that you are in the centre of a world that was once a Kingdom - an enclosed world - with only a hint or speculation of a possible world beyond. The Beacon, Tolborough Tor, Catshole Tor,  Brown Willy, Rough TorShowery Tor, High Moor, Buttern Hill, Bray Down, and Carne Down all lock you in - and beyond in the distance,  Brown Gelly."


Archaeological Research at Leskernick

Between 1995 and 1999,
Barbara Bender Barbara Bender is an anthropologist and archaeologist. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Heritage Anthropology at University College London. Career Bender studied for a PhD on the Neolithic of Northern France at the Institute of Archaeolo ...
, Sue Hamilton and Christopher Tilley directed a changing group of UCL students in the landscape investigation of the late
Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...
and
Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
archaeological sites on, and near, Leskernick Hill, with associated archaeological excavations. Named th
Leskernick Project
this took an experimental approach to develop new techniques for post processual interpretative archaeology, with a focus on the
phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (Peirce), a branch of philosophy according to Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 ...
- the lived sensory experience - of the archaeological landscape


Selected publications

* Barnatt, J,1982. Prehistoric Cornwall: The Ceremonial Monuments. Turnstone Press Limited. * Johnson, R. and Rose, P, 1994. Bodmin Moor: An Archaeological Survey. Vol.1: The human landscape to c1800. English Heritage. . * Bender, B, Hamilton, S., and Tilley, C. 1997. Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. ''Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society'' 63: 147–178. {{doi, 10.1017/S0079497X00002413 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273030093 * Herring, P, 1997. Early Prehistoric Sites at Leskernick, Altarnun  in Cornish Archaeology 36 pp176–185 * Hamilton, S., Tilley, C. and Bender, B. 1999. Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. ''Archaeology International'' 3: 13–17. * Hamilton, S., Harrison, S., and Bender, B. 2008. "Conflicting Imaginations: Archaeology, Anthropology and Geomorphology on Leskernick Hill, Bodmin Moor, Southwest Britain." ''Geoforum'' 39 (2): 602–15. * Bender, B., Hamilton, S., and Tilley, C. 2016''. Stone Worlds: Narrative and Reflexivity in Landscape Archaeology''. London: Routledge * Seager Thomas, M. 2011. Excavating on the Moor. Artefact Services Research Papers 1. https://archive.org/details/asrp1excavatingonthemoor


See also

*
Barbara Bender Barbara Bender is an anthropologist and archaeologist. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Heritage Anthropology at University College London. Career Bender studied for a PhD on the Neolithic of Northern France at the Institute of Archaeolo ...
* Sue Hamilton * Christopher Tilley *
Bodmin Moor Bodmin Moor () is a granite moorland in north-eastern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is in size, and dates from the Carboniferous period of geology, geological history. It includes Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, and Rough To ...
* Cornish Bronze Age *
Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty The Cornwall National Landscape (formerly the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) covers in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom; that is, about 27% of the total area of the county. It comprises 12 separate areas, designated under the Na ...
*
Hills of Cornwall This is a list of hills in Cornwall based on data compiled in various sources, but particularly th''Database of British and Irish Hills'' Jackson's ''More Relative Hills of Britain'' and the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 ''Explorer'' and 1:50,000 ''Lan ...


External links


Leskernick - Cornwall County Council Historic Environment Record

Cornwall AONB - Area 12: Bodmin Moor
* The UC

(landscape archaeology research)
Leskernick Hill
- Hill Bagging - the online version of the Database of British and Irish Hills


References

Bodmin Moor Bronze Age sites in Cornwall