St Breock Downs Monolith (or ''St Breock Longstone''; Cornish: ''Men Gurta'' ) is the largest and heaviest prehistoric

standing stone A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright rock (geology), stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the Eur ...

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, ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

.St Breock Downs Monolith
English Heritage, retrieved 12 April 2012 It stands on the summit of

St Breock St Breock () is a village and a civil parish in north Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The spelling St Breoke was also formerly in use. Geography St Breock village is 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Wadebridge immediately to the south of the Ro ...

Downs.

Description

The stone is made from the local

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

which has extensive

feldspar Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagiocl ...

veining, and it is estimated to weigh around 16.5 tonnes. It is 4.92 metres long and stands to a height of just over 3 metres above ground level.History and Research: St Breock Downs Monolith
English Heritage, retrieved 12 April 2012 It stands on a low stone mound or cairn with a diameter of around 10 metres. It is believed to be

Late Neolithic In the Near Eastern archaeology, archaeology of Southwest Asia, the Late Neolithic, also known as the Ceramic Neolithic or Pottery Neolithic, is the final part of the Neolithic period, following on from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and preceding th ...

Early 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 ...

(around 2500-1500 BC). It fell over in 1945, and was re-erected in 1956 after a small excavation had been carried out. The excavation showed that the stone stood in a setting of quartz pebbles below which were two small hollows. Similar hollows at other sites have been found to contain human bone or ashes. The stone may have been associated with other Bronze Age ritual monuments in the area, including one other standing stone, and a series of barrows that extend up to 4 miles (7 km) to the west. The stone is mentioned in antiquarian records as early as 1613, and was later adopted as a St Breock parish boundary marker. The site is now in the care of the

Cornwall Heritage Trust The Cornwall Heritage Trust (CHT) is an organisation which owns and manages historic sites in Cornwall, England. It was founded in 1985. It works in close cooperation with Natural England, Historic England and English Heritage. List of managed ...

on behalf of

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

Notes

External links

{{Commons category inline, St Breock Downs Monolith
St Breock Downs Monolith
English Heritage English Heritage sites in Cornwall Megalithic monuments in England Prehistoric sites in Cornwall