Trevethy Quoit

 

Pulling things out of the past.  Trevethy Quoit is probably  one of the strangest cromlechs in Cornwall.  Sitting in a field by a row of houses with a hole in the capstone and a squared entrance maybe, reminding you of similar Russian holed cromlechs.  Roy Goutte was an amateur archaeologist to his very bones.  Turning over a problem in his mind till he eventually found a solution, 

I have walked round a stone circle with him, and noted the triangulated shape of some stones, could they be female? 

It is called a Portal Dolmen because of the 'doorway' and is one of those strange burial places of the Neolithic age.  The following photos I took in 2014, and no I wasn't drunk at the time, as I definitely thought odd angles would bring out the weirdness of the stones.

Trethevy Quoit: Cornwall’s Megalithic Masterpiece | The Heritage Trust

"The earliest name recorded for these prehistoric structures in Cornwall is Cromlegh in an early 10th century charter for St Buryan. (Crom meaning curved, legh meaning slab in Cornish.) This word is closely related to the Welsh equivalent, ‘Cromlech‘. Where the term ‘quoit’ comes from isn’t entirely clear. Some believe the name has a connection to the game ‘Quoits’, others that it comes from a Cornish dialect word."

If you go to The Cornish Bird website you will find further explanations of how the word developed for quoit.