Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor (Cornish Standard Written Form: Goon Brenn)[1] is a granite moorland in north-eastern Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.

It includes Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, and Rough Tor, a slightly lower peak.

[4] The intrusion dates from the Cisuralian epoch, the earliest part of the Permian period, and outcrops across about 190 square km.

[11] The moor has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports about 260 breeding pairs of European stonechats as well as a wintering population of 10,000 Eurasian golden plovers.

[13] Institutional landowners within Bodmin Moor, North SSSI include the National Trust, the Ministry of Defence, the Forestry Commission and Highways England.

[16] The River Camel rises on Hendraburnick Down and flows for approximately 40 km (25 mi) before joining the sea at Padstow.

[19] The parishes on the moor are as follows: 10,000 years ago, in the Mesolithic period, hunter-gatherers wandered the area when it was wooded.

In the late 1990s, a team of archaeologists and anthropologists from UCL researched the Bronze Age landscapes of Leskernick over several seasons (Barbara Bender; Sue Hamilton; Christopher Tilley and students).

[22][23] In a programme shown in 2007 Channel 4's Time Team investigated a 500-metre cairn and the site of a Bronze Age village on the slopes of Rough Tor.

[24] King Arthur's Hall, thought to be a late Neolithic or early Bronze Age ceremonial site, can be found to the east of St Breward on the moor.

The moor gave its name (Foweymore) to one of the medieval districts called stannaries which administered tin mining: the boundaries of these were never defined precisely.

Until the establishment of a turnpike road through the moor (the present A30) in the 1770s the size of the moorland area made travel within Cornwall very difficult.

[31] Roughtor was the site of a medieval chapel of St Michael and is now designated as a memorial to the 43rd Wessex Division of the British Army.

Local labourer Matthew Weeks was accused of the murder, and at noon on 12 August 1844 he was led from Bodmin Gaol and hanged.