🔗 Share this article

Daylight dwindles rapidly as I stand within the granite circle near St Just. The rock monoliths glow in this sombre landscape, akin to curious, spectral figures collected about to observe our presence. Rising before us, a blanket of dried heathland plants ascends toward Carn Kenidjack, the sinister stone formation that overshadows the naked vista. After dark, this heath is said to be frequented by pixies and demons, and sometimes the devil himself emerges in search of lost souls.

Unconcerned by superstitious supernatural threat, we peer seawards, in the direction of the distant forms on the horizon that are the remote Isles of Scilly. The sky crack open and a flood of sunlight spills over the islands. My companion, expert in ancient skies a specialist in celestial alignments, and I gasp. It is marvellous a spectacle of nature which may have been experienced by the people who erected this circle millennia ago.

A Timeless Solstice Terrain

We have come together at Tregeseal to discuss the midwinter. The focus of her studies centers on the relationship of Neolithic Cornwall with the cosmos, and she characterizes the entire Land’s End peninsula as an age-old solstice-aligned terrain. This, she says, is because of the ridge of granite that runs toward the southwest along the peninsula, aligned with the December sunset. If, for example, you stand at midwinter by Chûn Quoit – the dolmen-like tomb high on the moors south of Morvah – you will see the sun set over Carn Kenidjack on the south-western horizon. And likely this is precisely as the tomb's Stone Age constructors intended.

"Where better to celebrate the re-emergence of the daylight than on the Land’s End peninsula, which is oriented toward the sinking location of the sun on the winter solstice?"

Carolyn suggests that this ancient monument was intentionally placed to allow people to watch the midwinter sun sinking behind the Isles of Scilly. “Observed from here, Scilly is a liminal space. On a bright day with high pressure, the isles look nearby and just pop. On cloudier occasions, they’re entirely absent. The ancient people could have regarded Scilly as an realm of spirits, possibly a spiritual domain, linked to the midwinter and the renewal of the light.”

Enigmatic Stones and Light Beams

We weave through the darkening russet moor past prehistoric burial mounds and mounds of engine waste to a enigmatic structure, which may be the UK’s only Neolithic line of holed stones. Unlike the stone at its more renowned counterpart a few miles away, it’s impossible to pass through the Kenidjack holed stones; these openings are scarcely big enough to pass my hand through and very low to the ground. Archaeologists remain perplexed.

Carolyn’s theory is that the alignment might have operated as a kind of midwinter timekeeping device, with the sun at dawn shining through the holes from autumn until December and casting varying rays of sunlight in the stones’ shadows. “Experiencing the warmth of that golden beam of sunlight in the frosty, dim moor gave me a tangible appreciation of how prehistoric people might have experienced the solstice,” she says.

Too many prehistoric monuments are oriented to the dawn or dusk of the sun at midwinter or midsummer for it to be a accident. It stands to reason that Stone Age agriculturalists, who relied on the sun for illumination, heat and the success of crops, would want to follow the sun’s journey. But in the 21st century, the short days of this time of year still affects our well-being, and so we look forward to the midwinter, that darkest day of all before the daylight hours begin to lengthen again.

Ancient Markers and New Traditions

A cutting breeze is whipping, and strange low sounds come from hidden cows as I tramp through damp clover to pay a visit the solitary monolith, watching over as it has done for thousands of years above the peninsula’s south coast. It is just one of many of standing stones that are solitary or in pairs or circles all over the peninsula; less than a mile away are the renowned petrified dancers, figures frozen in granite for violating the Sabbath. I think about how for ages the stone has endured here, enjoying its view of the Celtic Sea and English Channel: where once small craft would have drifted, now container ships and the Scilly ferry sail past.

"This midwinter event revives the old Cornish custom of disguised performance, with its intricate disguises, folk singing and music of pipe, drum and fiddle."

Christopher Morris’s captivating film, which documents 12 months in the existence of this stone, draws attention to the impact of its calm and quiet presence in the ever-changing landscape. “And I deliberately began and concluded the film with winter solstice,” he tells me, “because it is a moment of sheer anticipation – the assurance of the passing of the dark and a sunny new year ahead.”

On the shortest day, all over this region, people will be observing midwinter by walking to stone circles, sacred springs, ancient fortifications and heritage sites. Excursions will be conducted to observe the sun setting. Many will walk to standing stones in a kind of ritual of contemplation and rebirth. Later, thousands will congregate into the harbour town for the midwinter event, a midwinter festival that {dates only to|was established in|originated in