Who knows what was the purpose of this anchor point? I suspect no-one alive today. It’s a relic of the quarrying that used to go on in these parts. Cheesewring Quarry granite is famous. It’s in walls and pavements all over London and of course all over Cornwall. Quarrying here has gone on for centuries although the industrial know-how and power to extract large amounts of granite relatively quickly and easily is a product of the industrial revolution. Quarrying on this scale started here in the 1840s and has continued sporadically since, although there has been no new blasting in recent times.

The lives of the quarrymen were hard and dangerous. There was once a row of quarrymen’s cottages on the edge of the quarry but when quarrying stopped, no-one wanted to carry on living in such an inhospitable place so they fell into ruin and now all that remains is a few remnants of walls, fireplaces and doorways. It’s sad in a way but anyone who walks there in the winter will know just how exposed the area is.

One of the other local, defunct quarries has recently been “secondary harvested” by a local company who are, so far at least, simply picking up and using granite that was cut many moons ago. I don’t know if they plan to extract more or even if they are legally allowed to do so.

Artefacts like this are scattered all over the place and it’s often only when you see a neat row of holes along the edge of a bit of granite that you realise it didn’t get there through the forces of nature but by the hand of man. We see this sort of thing all of the time while walking the dogs but for some reason today this caught my eye in the sunshine.