14. Setbacks and re-balancing
This isn’t the post I was planning on making next, but it feels like the right thing for me. I want to share a little bit more about myself.
As well as having a massive fogou obsession, I also have a condition called ME, more commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I’ve had it for over 10 years now, and around a year ago had quite a major relapse of it. Since then, I am often housebound for days, weeks, even months at a time. If you’ve noticed an absence of posts recently, it’s because I got a cold a few weeks ago - not a big deal for most people, but for people like me with ME it can (and did this time) mean days or weeks stuck in bed.
I wanted to share this not for any sympathy, but to take the pressure off myself - since setting up this account, I’ve noticed that I’ve placed expectations and pressure on myself to keep momentum, increase likes and followers, post consistently etc. But that is difficult to do with a chronic fluctuating condition. So I’m going to try and take it a little more easy from now, and stop feeling guilty when I need to just take time for myself.
And in that spirit, here are some old, unedited, straight from my Canon A1 self portraits I took a couple years ago at Carn Euny
Also thank you @darkcornwall for inspiring this relaxing feeling of honesty
#projectfogou #carneuny #fogou
5: Theory Two, Refuge
Next on my hit list was Halligye, also close by on the Lizard. I’d seen a few images online that indicated
this was a more extensive structure than Piskey’s Hall, but I was not prepared for just how impressive this fogou was.
It was a good thing I’d brought a torch, as only the entrance of this structure is open to any light. Within a few meters, you are faced with narrow creep passageways in front and to the left, that do their best to stop light penetrating any further. I started left, and after ducking through the portal, travelled down a dark tunnel, curved at such an angle that you have no sense of where it begins or ends. A stumbling block to impede your journey in the dark, more creeps, skull basking low ceilings, and an emergency exit that led to outside the enclosure; this was surely no fridge! I dared to turn my torch off and found not a single impression of light escaped this far down into the fogou, just complete blackness.
My opinion was swayed, Halligye fogou was not for storage. This surely was a structure for hiding, for
escaping, for refuge…
But would this new theory last?
#projectfogou #fogou #halligyefogou #archaeology #cornwall
3: Fogou 101
Before I tell more of this story, I should probably stop to explain what on earth a fogou is. The word comes from various Cronish terms for cave (such as vau and ogo) and as the name suggests, they are cave/tunnel-like structures unique to Cornwall. They are concentrated around West Penwith and the Lizard, although more are being discovered further and further east. They consist of dry stone passageways (constructed without motor or binding material) and huge flat ‘lintel’ stones capping the tunnels. Most are constructed almost entirely underground, though a few clustered around Pendeen are mostly aboveground, passing not through earth but through giant stone walls.
Dating evidence is hard for structures made entirely of stone, but clues such as pottery found at the sites suggest they were built some time in the late Iron Age. There is no ‘typical’ layout for a fogou – some consist of a single passageway, others branch off into multiple directions by passing through tight ‘portals’ (stone doorways). Many have creep entrances, which are portals so tight you can only enter on your hands and knees. They are usually found within settlements but absent of signs of domestic use.
Their original use and reason for construction are lost to time, but suggestions include food storage, refuge, and ritual.
Photo 1: Pendeen Vau
Photo 2: Carn Euny
Photo 3: Diagram of fogous and beehive huts from ‘Mother and Sun’ by Ian McNeil Cooke
#fogou #carneuny #pendeen #cornwall #learning
Halliggye Fogou
Today, my lovely friend Kathryn took me somewhere she’s been wanting to share with me for a long time… Halliggye Fogou.
And honestly… I’m still feeling it.
Fogous are ancient underground structures found here in Cornwall, dating back over 2,000 years. No one knows exactly why they were built, places of refuge, storage, ritual, or something else entirely. That mystery lingers in the air the moment you step inside. We ducked through narrow stone doorways, followed winding crawlspaces, and traced the textures of rocks that have held their shape for centuries, like quiet echoes from another time.
But the moment that stayed with me most…
was when we turned off the lights.
Complete darkness.
Complete silence.
And this deep, grounding sense of peace.
It felt ancient. Still. Holding.
So grateful to you, Kathryn, for sharing this place with me 💚
(continued in comments from Kathryn + her beautiful project @project.fogou )
#HalliggyeFogou #CornwallHistory #AncientPlaces #SacredSpaces #HiddenCornwall
Welcoming the brilliant Kathryn Sainsbury-Wilkes @project.fogou as the eleventh artist for our Cornish Sacred Landscape event in Penzance , June 19 -21 at The Union Hotel.
As well as exhibiting her photography , Kathryn will be presenting a talk on Project Fogou and we are super excited to have her with us !
Kathryn Sainsbury-Wilkes is a photographer and researcher based in West Cornwall, with an educational background focussed on Natural History and Darkroom Photography. Her work is rooted in the specificity of place, providing central themes of Cornish history, folklore and landscape. Projects are often long term and adaptive, taking form in a variety of outputs from photographs, moving image, community projects, educational talks and installations.
Her work has been exhibited as far as New York and around the UK, with a current focus on Cornish Fogous and their role in the historical ritual landscape.
Alongside her solo work, Kathryn has also worked on multiple award winning documentaries and music videos and currently works in the photography department at Falmouth University
Pay what you can tickets for this upcoming event can be booked via the link in bio.
Introducing the wonderful Kathryn Sainsbury-Wilkes of @project.fogou as one of our guest speakers at our Cornish Sacred Landscape event, 19–21 June at The Union Hotel in Penzance.
We’re so excited to hear Kathryn speak about her investigations into the mystery of Cornwall’s fogous, and to share her insights into these fascinating underground spaces.
Learn more about Kathryn and Project Fogou in her own words below:
I am Kathryn Sainsbury-Wilkes, a traditional photographer and researcher based in Cornwall. I am heavily inspired by the nature, folklore, history and ancient landscape of Cornwall, which provide the inspiration and themes of my craft. I am presenting my current long form project ‘Fogou’.
In this ambitious undertaking, I am aiming to locate and photograph every known and suspected Fogou in Cornwall, and in the process try and make sense of these incredible but little understood monuments. During the showing of this work, I will also be embarking on ‘Operation Summer Solstice” in which I will be leading a team of volunteers around Cornwall to perform recordings and simultaneous solstace observations at various fogous, to explore the theory of fogou solar alignments.
For more information or to participate in OSS, please visit my instagram @project.fogou or website
Tickets for this event are available on a pay what you can basis from £2.50 and can be booked at
carncrescentcrow.com
Profits go to support organisations working to protect Cornwall's beautiful ancient sites
This summer solstice, join us in Penzance for The Cornish Sacred Landscape. A weekend of art, talks, sound and ritual inspired by Cornwall’s ancient sites.
With work from 20+ artists, plus talks, sound performance, ritual and alternative DJs, this special gathering opens Golowan Week with a celebration of landscape, heritage and creativity.
19–21 June • The Union Hotel, Penzance
Pay what you can tickets from £2.50:
carncrescentcrow.com
Profits go to support organisations working to protect Cornwall's beautiful ancient sites.
13. Preparation
By Autumn of 2024 I had been doing a lot of research and a lot of fogou visiting, and my friends had noticed. Instead of me saying “do you fancy a walk today?” it would be “do you want to come to fogou with me?” and the question I kept getting back was “when are we going to hear properly about what you’ve been up to?”. Ever the practical type, I figured the best way to tell everyone what I had been up to was to, well, tell everyone at once. And so after a brief chat with Steve Patterson, it was an enthusiastic yes please to me delivering my first talk at @cabinet_of_folklore_and_magic
I knew I wanted a few more pictures of other ancient sites in the talk, and so before I completed it, I did one final road trip around Penwith. By nightfall, I still needed a quoit, but with no flash how was I to light it? Luckily, after a quick search of OS maps, a little known but conveniently roadside wonder came to the rescue, in the form of Morvah Quoit. It is just close enough to the tarmac that I could light it using some candles and the high beams of my van, timed between passing cars. Surprisingly and to my great relief, the van did not get stuck.
#projectfogou #ancientcornwall #westpenwith #morvah #quoit
12. Scratching the Surface
As well as visiting new sites, I frequently take time to revisit my favourites – and Halligye is hard to beat. No matter how many times I go there and think I’ve explored every corner, I always find information suggesting bits I’ve missed and need to revisit.
On one such trip whilst sitting in the entrance to Halligye admiring the stones, I spotted something that I had not read about in papers and books – I noticed that some of the stones lining the fogou had strange lines cutting through them. There were a few dotted around the entrance, but all the ‘portals’ (doorways) were particularly covered in these strange lines. I spoke to Steve Patterson from @cabinet_of_folklore_and_magic and by some strange coincidence he too had noticed this phenomenon almost simultaneously. Were these natural markings or manmade? I called in the help of friend and geologist Alex Blackwell who suggested that they could be naturally occurring ‘joint sets’ and weathered veins that used to contain minerals such as quartz, but this does not negate the potential significance of their prominent placement in key areas of the fogou.
Here is my favourite of such stones at Halligye, which for hopefully obvious reasons I have nicknamed ‘the H stone’
#halligye #projectfogou #fogou #cornwall #archaeology
11. This Is a Fogou
Well, it WAS a fogou. Let me explain.
The first and biggest help I got from the Library at @cabinet_of_folklore_and_magic was the wonderful book Mother and Sun, by Ian McNeil Cooke - this person and book really deserve a post of their own, and they will get one in due course. If you have any serious interest in fogous, this book really is a close as it comes to THE book on the subject, establishing a list of ‘confirmed’, ‘likely’ and ‘unlikely’ fogous across Cornwall as well as theories and context for the sites. This book became my new guide, my mission now clear: To track down every known and possible Fogou in Cornwall and document whatever remained.
The first location that caught my eye was Castallack, down the road from Boleigh and illustrated beautifully by J.T.Blight (there’s another post to look out for) in 1867. Blight writes that this fogou was once located within an extensive settlement rivalling the likes of Chysauster in its level of preservation. Sadly, as you can see by my photo, the fogou and surrounding settlement have been completely destroyed in the years since then, with nothing remaining of the location of the fogou in what is now a farmyard.
This really cemented the importance of this project for me – how many more fogous are there hiding under barns, or waiting to be discovered in a corner of disused land?
#projectfogou #fogou #cornwall #archaeology #westpenwith
10: This is Not a Fogou.
Seeing as I’ve kept you all waiting for over a week for the next fogou to drop, I thought I’d give you a bonus megalith. This may look a bit like a fogou, but it is actually something much older.
Predating Fogous by a staggering 3000ish years, this is Brane Entrance Grave. As the name suggests, these structures are assumed to be funerary monuments, with fragments of human bones, ashes and pottery often found within.
I came across this characterful monument on a trip to Carn Euny, which is barely 500m away. Though much older, the site does have a few similarities with fogous, such as it’s two giant granite lintel stones capping the passageway. Being situated so close to Carn Euny, it’s interesting to consider if this may have been an early inspiration for the fogou there…
Next fogou incoming this week, so stay tuned!
#projectfogou #cornwall #cornishhistory #archaeology #entrancegrave
9: Adventures in Meta Reality
By now, it was starting to become clear that this project was bigger than I expected, and I needed some help. This came in the form of the brilliant Steve Patterson of @cabinet_of_folklore_and_magic aka Gwithti An Pystri. This Falmouth-based museum is a wealth of knowledge for all things folklore and magic, but also contains an amazing library where I found lots of information containing new leads that I would spend the next couple of years working through.
Now a good friend, I’d originally discovered Steve strangely enough not by his proximity (which turned out to be very close by) but through his rather brilliant podcast: Antiquarian Adventures in Meta Reality. In particular, of course, his episodes on fogous. One Autumn’s day, I found myself sat in Piskey’s Hall drawing the stones and listening along and experienced a moment of synchronicity that still sends happy shivers down my spine to watch back.
#projectfogou #cornwall #fogou #piskeyshall #archaeological
