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Helsbury
Michaelstow |
North Cornwall
NGR: SX 0838 7959 |
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The name Helsbury was first recorded in 1284 when it was written
Hellesbury. This is a curious combination of Cornish and English
elements; hen-lys is a Cornish phrase which translates as ‘ancient
court’ or “ruin” and bury the English word for a fortification.
The place name is a reference to Helsbury Castle, an Iron Age
hillfort comprising a single bank and external ditch enclosing an
area about 140 metres in diameter. In places the inner face of the
bank is visible and this shows that the rampart was built of dry
stone walling. An annexe provides an additional enclosed area on the
north-east – this may have been to provide defensive outworks to the
entrance to the hillfort, or to provide an extra enclosed area for
domestic or agricultural activity.
Stretches of bank plotted on the Ordnance Survey map of 1880 hint
that the annexe was possibly part of a continuous outer rampart,
though these may have been the remnants of an extensive radial field
system associated with the site, the imprint of which can still be
inferred from the modern pattern of field boundaries.
An undecorated sherd of Iron Age pottery was collected from a
disturbance caused by a badger’s sett but otherwise no finds have
come from this site. There is an on-going debate among
archaeologists about the function or functions of hillforts. The
large, strategically sited ones could have served as impregnable
fortresses, but they could equally have functioned as the very
visible indications of the wealth and power of their builders. Other
sites are less impressive but it seems likely that they served as
social and commercial foci, rather than simple agricultural
settlements. Occupation may have been seasonal and related to fairs
and festivals, cycles of religious observation, or civil
administration. Some smaller hillforts may have had a
straightforward domestic or agricultural role; others may have
served for a variety of functions.
Helsbury Castle is neither very large nor, with its present-day
single rampart, very imposing, though the site does command
extensive views. It is not really possible to decide between the
range of possible functions offered above and it could potentially
have supported any or all these purposes.
In the centre of the hillfort, the foundations of a rectangular
building lie within a sub-rectangular bank. This is said to be the
remains of St Syth’s chapel and, although excavations here by the
Reverend E.T. Gibbons were inconclusive, a parochial history of 1876
reported a substantial amount of worked and moulded granite arches
and granite quoins, a few of which can still be seen. At the west
end of the foundations are the footings for a tower. No rights of
burial are recorded for this site so the surrounding bank probably
served simply to keep stock out. A small mound within the hillfort
may be the site of a beacon, recorded as Michaelstow Beacon on the
Ordnance Survey map of 1880.
Post mediæval quarrying has caused some damage to the external
ramparts and eastern entrance of the hillfort but otherwise the
monument is generally in a good state of preservation.
The hillfort lies beside a ‘C’ class road off the B3266
Camelford-Bodmin road. Parking by the road on the north-west side of
the fort, a stone stile leads over the hedge-bank onto the site,
over which there is permissive access. |
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Ground & Aerial photographs |
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