chuncastle

Chûn Castle

Iron Age Hillfort

Chûn Castle was built about 2,500 years ago. Remains of tin smelting have been found there, strengthening the suggestions that tin mining was active in Cornwall in at least the 1st Century AD and probably earlier. Built on a high point Chûn Castle commands views along the northern Penwith coast and south towards Mounts Bay.

(The name 'Chun' comes from the Cornish 'Chy-an-Woone' meaning 'the House on the Downs'.)

From - "Old England: A Pictorial Museum" by Charles Knight (1845)

“It consists of two circular walls, having a terrace thirty feet between (Fig. 51). The walls are built of rough masses of granite of various sizes, some five or six feet long, fitted together, and piled up without cement, but presenting a regular and tolerably smooth surface on the outside. The outer wall was surrounded by a ditch nineteen feet in width: part of this wall in one place is ten feet high, and about five feet thick. Borlase is of [the] opinion that the inner wall must have been at least fifteen feet high; it is about twelve feet thick. The only entrance was towards the south-west, and exhibits in its arrangement a surprising degree of skill and military knowledge for the time at which it is supposed to have been constructed. It is six feet wide in the narrowest part, and sixteen in the widest, where the walls diverge, and are rounded off on either side. There also appear indications of steps up to the level of the area within the castle, and the remains of a wall which, crossing the terrace from the outer wall, divided the entrance at its two parts at its widest end. The inner wall of the castle incloses [sic] an area measuring one hundred and seventy-five feet north and south, by one hundred and eighty feet east and west. The centre is without any indication of buildings; but all around, and next to the wall, are the remains of circular inclosures, supposed to have formed the habitable parts of the castle. They are generally about eighteen of twenty feet in diameter, but at the northern side there is a larger apartment thirty by twenty.”

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I have found mention to Chûn Castle and removal of granite from the monument in "The Mayor of Penzance's Diary 1816"........ it reads,

" Early entries in the diary refer to work at the extension of the quay. H. Noy, a mason, was engaged for paving-stone laying, and hauliers were paid for carting stones from Busullow, nearly six miles from Penzance, the reason for this being the material composing then fine fortress of granite raised at Chun Castle, near Busullow, by the folk of the Ironage for protection against raiders.

Dr Borlase (1750) said the walls of the castle in his day were ten to twelve feet high, and Blight (1857) remarked with regret removal of much stone for building purposes."

Aerial View of Chûn Castle Today

Photograph Source - Steve Hartgroves, Historic Environment Service, Cornwall County Council

For more information and photographs of Chûn Castle and nearby Chûn Quoit (plus many more ancient monuments throughout the county) I recommend you visit

"Cornwall's Archaeological Heritage"
Access To Monuments (A2M)