A remarkable stone and turf structure on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall that was previously thought to be a medieval animal pen has been found to be 4,000 years older - and unique in Europe.
The rectangular monument was built not in the early medieval period to corral livestock, as recorded by Historic England, but rather in the middle Neolithic, between 5,000 and 5,500 years ago, archaeologists have discovered.
Nothing like it is known in Britain or farther afield, according to experts, meaning that the original purpose of the monument known as King Arthur’s Hall is a mystery.
“There isn’t another one of these anywhere,” said the lead archaeologist, James Gossip. “There is nothing built at that time or subsequently in prehistory that is a rectangular earth and stone bank with a setting of stone orthostats around the interior. There is no other parallel.”
According to Gossip, the middle Neolithic was a time when people were starting to settle in the same place for the first time and building enclosures. “The thinking is that these are meeting points for communities, perhaps to mark special occasions or to carry out ceremonies.”
The so-called “hall” consists of a banked enclosure measuring 49 metres by 21 metres, lined on the inside with 56 standing stones up to 1.8 metres tall. Cornwall Archaeological Unit and experts from the universities of Reading, St Andrews and Newcastle have now established that the interior of the monument had been dug away about 3000 BC.
To put that into perspective, Stonehenge was constructed in several phases beginning about 3100 BC. The famous circle of large sarsen stones were placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC.
As for the intriguing name of the structure in Cornwall, which goes back to at least 1583, the monument certainly wasn’t built by or for King Arthur, who – if he existed at all – is associated with the early Anglo-Saxon period in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.