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Illumination wanes rapidly as I stand within the ancient ring of stones at Tregeseal. The ancient pillars appear luminous in this sombre terrain, resembling curious, spectral figures collected round to witness our activities. Above us, a blanket of withered heathland plants rises toward the rocky hill of Carn Kenidjack, the foreboding granite tor that dominates the bare horizon. During the evening, this moor is believed to be visited by pixies and demons, and sometimes a dark rider emerges seeking wayward spirits.

Unafraid by superstitious supernatural threat, we gaze toward the ocean, at the smudges on the horizon that are the distant Isles of Scilly. The sky part and a flood of sunlight falls over the islands. My companion, archaeoastronomer a specialist in celestial alignments, and I gasp. It is stunning natural theatre which may have been witnessed by the people who erected this circle 4,000 years ago.

A Timeless Solstice Terrain

We have met at Tregeseal to talk about the winter solstice. Carolyn’s work centers on the relationship of the region's ancient past with the heavens, and she portrays the entire Land’s End peninsula as an prehistoric winter solstice landscape. This, she notes, is because of the spine of granite that extends toward the southwest along the peninsula, pointing toward the midwinter sunset. If, for example, you stand at midwinter by Chûn Quoit – the capstoned tomb high on the moors south of Morvah – you will see the sun sink over the rocky hill on the south-western horizon. And likely this is precisely as the tomb's Stone Age constructors intended.

"Is there a more fitting location to mark the re-emergence of the sun than on the Penwith peninsula, which aims directly at the setting point of the sun on the winter solstice?"

The theory posits that the stone ring was deliberately sited to allow people to observe the midwinter sun setting behind the Isles of Scilly. “Seen from here, Scilly is a threshold place. On a clear day with high pressure, the isles look nearby and just seem to leap out. On different days, they’re entirely absent. The circle builders could have perceived Scilly as an realm of spirits, perhaps a spiritual domain, linked to the darkest day and the rebirth of the light.”

Enigmatic Stones and Light Beams

We weave through the darkening copper-colored moor past prehistoric burial mounds and mounds of industrial waste to a mysterious monument, which may be the UK’s only ancient row of stones with holes. In contrast to the stone at Mên-an-Tol a few miles away, it’s difficult to pass through the stones at Kenidjack; these openings are barely big enough to insert my hand through and right down to the ground. Archaeologists remain puzzled.

One hypothesis is that the row might have functioned as a kind of midwinter timekeeping device, with the rising sun shining through the holes from the end of October until December and casting varying shafts of light in the stones’ shadows. “Experiencing the glow of that sunbeam of sunlight in the chilly, gloomy moor gave me a visceral appreciation of how prehistoric people might have perceived midwinter,” she says.

Too many ancient sites are aligned to the sunrise or sunset of the sun at the solstices for it to be a coincidence. It stands to reason that Stone Age agriculturalists, who depended on the sun for light, warmth and the cultivation of crops, would want to follow the sun’s path. But in the present day, the short days of this time of year still weighs on our well-being, and so we welcome the shortest day, that darkest day of all before the sunlit time begin to grow again.

Persistent Stones and Modern Rituals

A bitter easterly is blowing, and strange cries rise from invisible cows as I walk through damp clover to make a pilgrimage the solitary monolith, watching over as it has done for millennia above the peninsula’s south coast. It is just one of dozens of standing stones that stand alone or in alignments all over the peninsula; less than a mile away are the famous Merry Maidens, dancers transformed into rock for violating the Sabbath. I think about how long the stone has remained here, witnessing its panorama of the surrounding seas: where once Neolithic coracles would have sailed, now container ships and the passenger ferry travel through.

"This midwinter event reinvigorates the historic practice of disguised performance, with its elaborate masks and costumes, folk singing and music of traditional instruments."

Christopher Morris’s mesmerising film, which documents one cycle in the existence of this stone, emphasizes the significance of its still and silent existence in the constantly shifting landscape. “And I deliberately opened and closed the film with midwinter,” he says, “because it is a point of pure hope – the pledge of the ending of darkness and a bright new year ahead.”

On the winter solstice, all over West Penwith, people will be marking midwinter by hiking to stone circles, water sources, ancient fortifications and prehistoric lookout points. Guided walks will be organized to observe the sunset. Many will journey to ancient stones in a form of ritual of introspection and new beginnings. Later, many people will congregate into the town for the Montol festival, a midwinter festival that {dates only to|was established in|originated in