Qualla: Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Talskiddy, CC BY 3.0. Stand on the highest of the three concentric ramparts at midsummer dawn and the whole north coast of Cornwall lies open beneath you. Castle an Dinas tops Castle Downs at 708 feet above sea level, three rings of ditch and earthwork dropped here by hands working in the third or second century before Christ. The Iron Age builders left no documents, but the people who came after them could not stop telling stories about this place. King Arthur rode out from here, they said, to hunt across Tregoss Moor. Royalists voted here in 1646 to surrender to Parliament. A man was caged here in 1671 and starved to death. The bonfires on the highest point each Midsummer Eve are older than any of it.

Image: Talskiddy | CC BY 3.0

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: Arthur's Hunting Lodge

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rod Allday, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first written account of Castle an Dinas comes from the antiquary William of Worcester, who visited Cornwall in 1478 and described the fort as already ruined: it lies on a high hill, he wrote, and a spring rises in the midst of the castle. He recorded a local legend that Tado...

Image: Rod Allday | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: The Council of War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtticTapestry, CC BY-SA 4.0. In March 1646 the English Civil War in the west was effectively over, though the men camping inside the Iron Age rings of Castle an Dinas had not yet admitted it. Sir Ralph Hopton's Royalist troops bedded down for two nights within the ramparts and held a council of war among the...

Image: AtticTapestry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: The Cage on the Rock

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilson44691 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On a market day in June 1671 a man named John Trehenban, twenty-one years old and known locally as Tremmon, walked into the house of Captain Peter Pollard at the bridge in St Columb Major and murdered two young women: Anne Pollard, the captain's daughter, and Loveday Rosevear, ag...

Image: Wilson44691 at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: Russellite and Russet Hills

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Weston, CC BY-SA 2.0. From 1916 to 1957 the slopes below the hillfort hosted Cornwall's largest wolfram mine, producing the tungsten ore that hardened steel for two world wars and the Cold War that followed. Many of the buildings still stand. The mine is the type locality for the mineral Russellite, n...

Image: David Weston | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castle an Dinas, St Columb Major: Midsummer Fires

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kicior99, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the eve of midsummer each year the Federation of Old Cornwall Societies lights a bonfire on the highest point of the fort, part of a chain of fires spreading across Cornwall in a tradition called Tansys Golowan. The ceremony predates Christianity in these islands, marking the ...

Image: Kicior99 | CC BY-SA 3.0