Devon and Cornwall quite famously sit on a massive amount of granite, with the tors of the nearby moorlands made out of outcrops of the hard rock. You will often also come across standing stones on the moors, the plentiful and hard wearing material perhaps fashioned and arranged by ancient hands for ceremonial religious uses, walls for livestock or shelters against the weather.
You can of course now buy modern quarried and manufactured granite items – my own house has a pair of very square granite gate posts – but some older examples seem to have been ‘acquired’ over the many years and turn up ‘re-purposed’ in agricultural settings around the county.
Perhaps in thousands of years people may speculate about this single, now unattached-to-anything lump of granite on the outer ring of Warbstow Bury, although they might have to scratch their heads and wonder about the purpose of the single metal bracket attached to it.
Interesting! Possibly a marker for travel?
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I think the Bury was used as just another field by farmers in the past (it is still grazed by sheep sometimes) so hence has one or two of these posts where some older pens or enclosures might have been.
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I don’t think a color photo would have shown so much texture in the granite as this black and white does. I live in the Pacific Northwest, up in the mountains, which are nothing but granite. Pink granite, blue granite, the more traditional (black and gray, with mica) granite – it’s everywhere. And the textures are amazing, just like you’ve caught here.
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Yes, it’s hard to work with and yet nature erodes it gradually and beautifully over time.
Oh, and yes, the colour version doesn’t work… but I might be a bit biased about that… 😉
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This reminds me of a woodland near me that is unfenced, but has a very carefully places garden gate part way along it, not attached to anything either side!
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I suppose it’s a good example of how temporary and arbitrary human ‘ownership’ and borders created on the land can be.
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You live in a beautiful place. What a fascinating a lonely purpose? It would be interesting to know how it got to be there.
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I think the whole site was treated as just another agricultural field for a range of uses in the past. A 2013 investigation even threw up evidence of ploughing in its centre before.
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