Logan Rock or Castel Tredhyn, castle of Tredyn (SW 3972 2198)
With a daunting magic and brooding mystery hovering around it, Treryn Dinas is a fascinating place, though it’s also a place not to be messed with. Enter with respect or the Cosmic Trickster might knobble you with a dash of unsolicited reality.
You get the feeling odd things might have happened here. It’s a place of mystery, power, sorcery and truth. Not exactly tranquil, it is nonetheless impressive in its strong underlying feeling of power. In folklore it was the home of giants.
On the actual dinas there aren’t easy assembly places or comfortable places to hang out – precarious scrambling is involved – so at any time people will have been in small numbers only on the dinas. Something about this and its obstacular nature gives the dinas its character. It’s strong in feeling, and worth visiting to feel the brooding, enigmatic character of the place.
The headland has two parts, the rocky headland itself and a large encampment to its landward side called Treen Circle, built in the Iron Age, according to archaeological orthodoxy – and the banks on its landward side probably were Iron Age.
However, its first use would have been in the Neolithic 3000s BCE, if not earlier, even if little or nothing was built there then. Neolithic artefacts and relics have been found on the dinas – items and offerings hidden in the rocks.
How otherwise can we say it’s Neolithic? First, the dinas is so prominent and rich in character that it must have been important.
Second, Treen Circle lies exactly on a backbone alignment (108) through the Merry Maidens, St Michael’s Mount and Carn Brea – an alignment of three natural features (two Neolithic tor enclosures and one cliff sanctuary) with a Bronze Age stone circle dropped onto it. Treen Circle is where people would hang out and camp when visiting the dinas. Antiquarians once thought there was a stone circle in Treen Circle, but this is improbable.
It was the most inhabited of the cliff sanctuaries of Penwith except perhaps for St Michael’s Mount. Treen Circle encampment was large – it could have hosted some pretty big gatherings and, in the Iron Age, quite a few people in roundhouses. This would have been a summer residence – in winter it is exposed.
It was strategically placed, not far from Porthcurno, one of Penwith’s prime landing beaches. But still, it’s a bit far away for defence of the beach, if such were necessary, so a defensive purpose to the dinas is questionable, even though Treen Circle is separated from the surrounding landscape by a significant Iron Age rampart and ditch.
Just outside it, a strongly aligned menhir has recently been rediscovered and re-erected.
Unlike many cliff sanctuaries, Treryn Dinas had practical value, with good farmland and fishing grounds nearby, situated in a commanding position that is a twenty minute trot from Porthcurno.
One wonders whether rocking the logan rock at Treryn Dinas was done to make sound and rhythm for geomantic reasons, to pulse the earth, or even as an ancient kind of foghorn, sounding out a slow drumbeat to warn boats when sea mists were down.
The rather unique upstanding stone at its summit gives Treryn Dinas a special character – it might have been placed there.
Another backbone alignment runs from Treryn Dinas to Boscawen-ûn stone circle, Lanyon Quoit, Bosiliack Barrow (a rather special chambered cairn) and a menhir just yards from the Nine Maidens. So, three of Penwith’s stone circles are linked with Treryn Dinas – that’s significant. Even so, no alignment has been found with Tregeseal, the fourth stone circle of Penwith.
See it on a map
More about Cliff Sanctuaries
Love from me, Palden
Notes from the Far Beyond 