the woman, germanic; the man, ancestry bretonic

the woman came from the southern german tribes around lake bodenzee and ended her life, 2 years short of a century lies in west penwith.

the man whose ancestry descends from brittany was born in a london tenement near lambeth walk.

the carnac alignments are likened to a city of stones.

the son wears his mothers ring on the small finger on his left hand.

the ring form goes back to pre-history.

he draws with his right.

west penwith is an island at the foot of britain – an island made by nine miles of lowland marsh from hayle on it’s north coast to marazion on its south.

it was always as much connected to brittany and the mediterranean as to england.

jon kernow a fisherman now in his eighties has never crossed the tamar but regularly dropped anchor in brittany.

a greek geographer pytheas and contemporary of aristotle. visited the small island of icus off the south coast and found a friendly trading people – the west welsh.

tin was mined here in the pre-historic period.

a new 3 mile shaft was was driven at givor last year.

settlements and not towns are the urban form up till around the magna carter.

round houses grouped together in small numbers are the dominate form up until the roman occupation but continue in penwith into the british-romano period.

standing stones are numerous in west penwith.  symbolic standing structures that relate the earth and their builders to the sun, moon and stars.

menhir from the breton men meaning stone and hir meaning long.

quoits are the major burial ‘houses’ of megalithic man -a large flat stone laid floating onto two or more upright ones – each generation piled one upon another.

the etruscans funeral urns hold the cremated remains of the dead.

they also take the form of houses – houses within houses.

celtic crosses mark the old trade routes and are reminiscent of the earlier menhir.

graves are often marked by celtic crosses.

early ones are abstracted forms based on roman gods and figure heads.

john price, land and slaveowner in jamaica commissioned two small roadside granite sculptures in newlyn.

one commemorates the finding of a gold ring and the other shaped like a thimble is known as the sugar ‘lump’.

we still plan new menhirs.

the mother was cremated in 2008 aged 98.

only four years after the romans first invaded  they reached where now stands exeter where it administered dumnonia.

dumnonia is the collection of tribes that had occupied what became devon and cornwall.