Qualla: Ballowall Barrow https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ballowall Barrow https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow Ballowall Barrow: Introduction https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow/ Photo credit Richard Law, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of recorded history, Ballowall Barrow simply was not there. The tin miners working the cliffs near St Just had heaped their spoil across it generation after generation, and the great cairn of the dead vanished beneath the waste of the living. Then in 1878, William Copeland Borlase ordered the rubble cleared away, and out of the mining tip rose a 72-foot-wide monument that had been holding the bones of Cornwall's first peoples since the Bronze Age. The miners had walked over it for centuries without knowing.

Read more: Ballowall Barrow on Qualla

Image: Richard Law | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/gbgv-ballowall-barrow-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ballowall Barrow: Where the Cliff Falls Away https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow/ Photo credit Kernow Skies, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ballowall sits on Ballowall Common, a flat shelf of moorland where the land of Penwith makes its last stand before dropping straight into the Atlantic. From the barrow, the Brisons rise out of the water a mile offshore, twin teeth in the western swell. Cape Cornwall hooks south. ...

Read more: Ballowall Barrow on Qualla

Image: Kernow Skies | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/gbgv-ballowall-barrow-where-the-cliff-falls-away.mp3 0:06 2 full Ballowall Barrow: A Monument in Layers https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow/ Photo credit Takver from Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ballowall is not one tomb but several, stacked across a thousand years. At its heart sits a central domed structure containing stone-lined burial cists, with a pit dug beneath. Around this inner monument runs an outer cairn ring, itself studded with cists. Set into the outer wall...

Read more: Ballowall Barrow on Qualla

Image: Takver from Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/gbgv-ballowall-barrow-a-monument-in-layers.mp3 0:06 3 full Ballowall Barrow: Borlase's Excavation https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow/ Photo credit Kernow Skies, CC BY-SA 3.0. William Copeland Borlase was thirty years old in 1878, a Cornish gentleman antiquarian with a famous archaeological surname and a habit of digging into anything ancient he could find. When he heard the mining captains describe a strange mound buried under the spoil tips at Ballow...

Read more: Ballowall Barrow on Qualla

Image: Kernow Skies | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/gbgv-ballowall-barrow-borlases-excavation.mp3 0:06 4 full Ballowall Barrow: Where the Past Touches the Present https://qualla.com/ballowall-barrow/ Photo credit Jowaninpensans, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today the barrow is in the guardianship of English Heritage and managed by the National Trust. The South West Coast Path runs past it, and walkers stopping for a breather on the cliff edge often miss it entirely, mistaking the low concentric rings of stone for a quirk of the moor...

Read more: Ballowall Barrow on Qualla

Image: Jowaninpensans | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/v/ballowall-barrow-wp/gbgv-ballowall-barrow-where-the-past-touches-the-present.mp3 0:06 5 full