Caer Bran is a multi-period hill-top site which contains archaeological remains from both the Bronze Age and Iron Age periods, principally an early Bronze Age hilltop enclosure with ring cairns and an unusually unfinished Iron Age hillfort.
The hillfort had traditionally been considered to be a fine example of a double-banked Iron Age enclosure, but research in the 1990s by Craig Weatherhill and the Cornwall Archaeological Unit (Anna Lawson-Jones and Peter Herring) discovered that it had origins in the Bronze Age.
The monument contains three early Bronze Age stone ring cairns, ritual monuments, that were enclosed by a bank, considered to be contemporary, around 2000 BCE. The subsequent re-enclosure of the monument took place in the later Iron Age, probably in the 4th or 3rd centuries BCE. The line of the new bank and ditch respected the earlier ritual features, which can still be seen, and this continuity indicates the continued importance of Caer Bran to the people of the local area.
The massive earthworks you can see here today were probably intended to create a gathering place, a status symbol and a defendable fort. However, the work stopped before the western side was complete and Caer Bran was abandoned, with the bank on that side substantially lower than that on the finished eastern side, and the external ditch left undug in places.
The outermost bank of the hillfort is up to 4.0m high, fronted by a wide ditch, in places some 2.0m deep, with a slight counterscarp bank to the north-east. The older inner rampart is a less substantial earth bank, having been extensively robbed of stone. The external diameter of the enclosure is approximately 115m, while the interior space is some 60m across.
The hill was subsequently used by medieval farmers for summer grazing. Later, people made money from small-scale tin mining: prospecting pits were succeeded by shoad pits, removing deposits of tin ore dislocated from its parent lode, and then by primitive shafts called lode-back pits and finally deep shafts. A track was built across the hilltop, cutting through the ring cairns.
In the early twentieth century, granite was extracted from the high south-western hillside using explosives in a substantial quarry.
The place-name Caer Bran could also be quite significant. It contains two elements. Caer is Cornish for fort. Bran meanwhile means raven and is also used in the name of the nearby settlement of Brane. Alternatively, Caer Bran could mean the “fort of Bran,” which is a reference to Bran the Blessed, a mythological Celtic king who features in early Welsh mythology including the Mabinogion.
Other features in the landholding include medieval clearance heaps, as well as a number of post-medieval banks on the perimeter of the associated land. A post-medieval track, delineated by two stone-faced earth banks, crosses the area in a NNW-SSE direction, and goes through the middle of the hillfort and one of the ring cairns.
The site was purchased by Cornwall Heritage Trust in February 2022 after Historic England made the decision to add the nine-hectare site to its Heritage at Risk Register, due to a risk of bracken and scrub overgrowth. It was bought to protect the site from these issues as well as from possible development and intensive agricultural use.
The purchase was made possible by a generous gift left to us by Miss Carlene Edith Harry in her will. Miss Harry was from West Penwith and had a keen interest in her local history.
In November 2024, the site was removed from Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register due to Cornwall Heritage Trust’s successful interventions. It has been on the Heritage at Risk Register at many points over the last two decades and that’s why when it came onto the market in 2022, we made it our mission to save it once and for all. The site’s story is a testament to what can happen when historic places receive the care and land management expertise they need.
Caer Bran reconstruction image by Phoebe Herring