Ballowal Barrow, near Carn Gloose, St Just; this is truly monumental in scale and execution.
Ballowal Barrow
This is on the road from St Just to Carn Gloose. A complex cairn, being circular .
This has been described as a megalithic chamber tomb, though not of the form generally known as megalithic,
and properly an entrance grave , this is of the type exclusive to Penwith,
being Early/Middle Bronze Age.; it is formed of large stones, and is large in concept.
There is an outer wall, with a small kist.
Inside, there is a corbel domed building, of much earlier date. Inside that are five kists, with a deep grave pit.
There are in all nine kists on the site, two of them contained urns.
Why the older central chamber was kept and a greater wall built, is not known, but the significance
may be that the occupier of the central older chamber was known to those people that came after
and due reverence was continued or the site's importance was supplanted,
in the same manner in which Christain sites were built on pagan sites.
From the plan, it is clear that no order of reference was made or given, as there is no alignment,
or connection between each burial.
From analysis and examination, it appears there was no ordered plan involved, the sizes and designs
being generated from materials immediately available and although to a basic ideal, did not conform, one to another.
There are four other chambers with two concentric stone walls, Bodinnar, Bosavern, Bosporthenis and Boleigh.
There are just two other chambers on headlands, Trevalga and Trewavas.
Raymond Forward
