Tregiffian Burial Chamber

This Neolithic or early Bronze Age chambered tomb. A chamber and passage is covered and walled by stone slabs. A cup marked stone, now in the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, was found in the chamber. A number of standing stones are nearby which include the Pipers, two large uprights which are aligned to the Merry Maidens circle to the northeast. The site is close to the Merry Maidens Stone Circle.

Our visit

This site is right beside the road west from the Merry Maidens and so it is easy to combine a visit to both. This late Neolithic cairn was bigger but reduced in size by nearly half when the road was widened. Finds of cremated bone fragments, thought to be from the second phase of reconstruction, had a radiocarbon date of about 1900 BC. There are three large capstones and another that has fallen into the chamber. It is an impressive chambered cairn and well worth a visit. A cupmarked stone from the chamber can be seen in the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro.