Cheesewring
The Cheesewring is one of Cornwall's most remarkable and visually arresting natural landmarks, a towering stack of granite rocks perched dramatically on the summit ridge of Stowe's Hill on Bodmin Moor. Rising to a height of around nine metres, this extraordinary geological formation consists of a series of weathered granite discs piled one upon another in a seemingly precarious, top-heavy arrangement — wider at the top than at the base — that looks for all the world as though a giant hand has stacked them in deliberate, playful defiance of gravity. The name itself is thought to derive from a fancied resemblance to the old Cornish cheese press, or "cheesewring," in which rounds of curd were stacked and squeezed under increasing weight. It is listed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is widely regarded as one of the most striking tor formations in the whole of southwest England.
The Cheesewring owes its existence not to human hands but to millions of years of geological process. The granite of Bodmin Moor was formed roughly 280 to 300 million years ago as molten magma intruded upward and cooled slowly beneath the surface, crystallising into the coarse-grained rock visible today. Over vast spans of time, weathering — particularly the freeze-thaw cycles of the Ice Age and subsequent periglacial conditions — exploited natural joint planes in the rock, rounding the edges of individual blocks and leaving them balanced in their improbable stacks. The result is a formation that appears artificially constructed but is entirely natural. Nearby, the deep quarry workings at Cheesewring Quarry, which operated extensively through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and supplied granite for major engineering projects including parts of the Thames Embankment in London, stand as a reminder that the surrounding landscape has been intensively exploited by human industry even as this particular formation was spared.
The site carries deep layers of legend and myth. One of the most enduring stories concerns a giant named Uther and a saint named Tue (sometimes given as St Tue or Treveor), who reputedly engaged in a stone-throwing contest on this very hillside. The saint won through divine intervention, and the Cheesewring was said to have been the result of the miraculous stacking of the stones. Another persistent local legend holds that a golden cup rested within or beside the Cheesewring, filled by an invisible hand and replenishing itself miraculously — a symbol of sacred abundance. A similar cup, now known as the Rillaton Gold Cup and dating from the Bronze Age, was indeed discovered in 1837 inside a nearby burial chamber called Rillaton Barrow, lending an extraordinary real-world dimension to the old tale. The cup was kept for many years by King George IV among his personal effects, later passing to the British Museum and then to the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, where it can still be seen.
Standing at the base of the Cheesewring in person is a genuinely awe-inspiring experience. The massive upper stones seem to overhang almost impossibly, and there is something instinctively unsettling about their poise — the rational mind knows they have stood this way for thousands of years, but the eye struggles to accept it. The granite itself is deeply textured and streaked with pale and silvery tones, pocked with hollows where rainwater collects and coated in patches with vivid orange, grey and black lichen. On a clear day, the wind whips freely across the exposed moorland summit and the air has a raw, mineral quality. In damp or misty weather the scene takes on a brooding, primordial atmosphere, with the grey stones half-lost in cloud and the moor stretching away in all directions in muted greens and purples.
The surrounding landscape of Stowe's Hill and the wider Bodmin Moor is extraordinarily rich in prehistoric remains, making the Cheesewring only the most photogenic element of a much broader archaeological and natural landscape. The hillside and its immediate environs are dotted with Bronze Age cairns, stone circles and enclosures. The Hurlers, a remarkable complex of three Bronze Age stone circles lying just to the north near the village of Minions, is one of the finest such groupings in southwest England and is only a short walk away. Minions itself, the highest village in Cornwall, sits nearby and offers a welcoming pub. To the south and east, the open moorland rolls away toward other tors and the distant fringes of the moor, while the views on a clear day extend south toward the sea and north toward the higher central plateau of Bodmin Moor.
Reaching the Cheesewring is straightforward and the walk is rewarding even for those with modest fitness. The most popular approach is from the car park at Minions village, from which a well-worn path leads uphill across the moor in roughly fifteen to twenty minutes. The terrain is open moorland — firm in dry weather, boggy in prolonged wet conditions — and the final approach involves a modest but sometimes steep scramble over rough ground. Stout footwear is advisable. The quarry immediately adjacent to the Cheesewring is now disused, and care should be taken near the edge. There is no admission fee, as the site is open moorland managed by Cornwall Council and accessible year-round. Minions offers parking, a café and a small heritage centre providing useful context about the moor's geology and prehistory.
A curious footnote in the story of this place concerns Daniel Gumb, an eighteenth-century stonecutter and self-taught mathematician and astronomer who carved himself a cave dwelling into the hillside below the Cheesewring and lived there with his family for many years. Gumb carved mathematical theorems and astronomical diagrams into the rock of his home, including a geometric proof from Euclid, and by all accounts was a genuinely learned eccentric who preferred solitary study amid the moorland stones to any conventional life. His original cave was destroyed by quarrying operations, but a later version incorporating his carved inscriptions was rebuilt nearby and can still be found on the hillside — a strange, touching monument to intellectual life lived at the absolute edge of society.