Cornish village abandoned over 1,000 years ago that you can still visit today

In the 1840s, tin miners in Cornwall stumbled upon something unexpected. Instead of the precious metal they were looking for, they unearthed a stone fogou, or underground passage, a unique feature in far west Cornwall.

Two decades earlier and antiquarian and liberal politician WC Borlase began excavations at the site, focusing exclusively on the fogou discovered by the miners. It was not until a century later, in the 1960s, that archaeologists extended their exploration to the wider settlement.

This led to the discovery of the remains of stone houses, circular drainage ditches and pits, all part of the early Iron Age timber roundhouses, which had since been destroyed. The village was later called Carn Euny.

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The exact chronology of habitation at Carn Euny remains a mystery. However, houses and other unearthed artefacts suggest that the village was occupied during the Iron Age and continued to be inhabited after the Roman invasion of England.

The variety of dwellings indicates that the village was continuously occupied throughout this period. The round wooden houses, believed to have been built between 500 and 400 BC, were eventually replaced by stone houses sometime in the 1st century BC, the Mirror reports.

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Then, between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, these round stone houses gave way to larger “court houses”, also made of stone. Today, it is the ruins of these houses that form much of what remains of Carn Euny.

Evidence indicates that the settlement was a center for agriculture and possibly the tin trade, with field boundaries suggesting that villagers grew oats and barley and raised livestock such as sheep and goats.

The reason behind the abandonment of Carn Euny remains a mystery, but it seems that the development of the village stopped towards the end of the Roman occupation.

Several other ancient villages have been unearthed in the surrounding areas, including the ancient village of Chysauster, which was first inhabited nearly 2,000 years ago. Similar to Carn Euny, the reasons for Chysauster’s abandonment remain unknown.

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