Boscawen-un is a charming little circle, set in its own bracken-fringed circle of walls and vegetation. It is perhaps most famous for its ‘central’ standing stone, leaning at a risky angle like the gnomen of a sundial.

Curiously, it is sometimes known as the ‘Nine Maidens’ which helps to confuse it with two near neighbours: Boskednan and Tregeseal. In fact there are nineteen upright stones within the nearly ellipse 25m space as well as a few recumbent stones which may have been a burial cist.

A favourite stone is the lovely quartz rock on the south west side, a solid lump of shiny material whose purpose is of course unknown. Sir Normal Lockyer suggested that ‘from it the May sun was seen to rise over the centre of the circle’.

It was here that the Cornish Gorsedd was inaugurated in 1928.

Two menhirs are close by but invisible from the enclosed space of the circle. It has been suggested that the alignment of one of these would have indicated the rising of Capella in 2250 BCE.

Also close by, and hidden in mass of bracken, is Creeg tol, a curious flat stone with wide views and pools of standing water: just the sort of thing to get antiquarians excited about human sacrifices.

Alongside is another flat stone called the Giant’s footprint, and somewhere, completely hidden in the bracken on a September day, is a tiny circle of about ten small stones.

Finding it. The stone circle is here and creeg tol is here. There is a small layby for about four cars on the A30 here which is easily missed, or you can park close to the outlying standing stone and farm here, following a (frequently overgrown) path to the stone circle.