THE QUOIT
Christopher Tilley
Adapted for the internet by Paul Basu
The 'quoit' on top of Leskernick hill is visible from long distances away to the south, from Codda to the west about 1 km distant but not from the north and the east. Approaching Leskernick from the north it is the large cairn that dominates the skyline. The quoit is sighted on the skyline from the southern stone circle, just visible from the stone row terminal but disappears out of view as one approaches the northern stone circle. It must have been positioned to be seen from the south as one approaches the hill.
The quoit somewhat resembles in form a Neolithic burial chamber, hence the term. It consists of a roughly triangular shaped slab 2.8 m long, 1.8 m wide and 0.3 m thick propped up at an angle by three small boulders on top of a long linear exposed rock outcrop. This creates a box through which the horizon to the north can be seen. The dying rays of the midsummer sun shine through this box just before it disappears below the horizon. The long axis of the perched stone points towards the Rough Tor summit and cairns to the north-west. The precise antiquity of this structure is difficult to determine. The weathering patterns on the rock suggest that it is very old and Peter Herring has argued on the basis of astronomical alignments with a possible long barrow to the north-west of the Beacon and below Leskernick hill, that it may be Late Neolithic in date i.e. the oldest structure on Leskernick hill.
The relationship between the Quoit and the Bronze Age settlements on Leskernick hill suggests that this may indeed be the case. Fig. 2 shows the intervisibility envelope of the Quoit i.e. the area from which it is visible on Leskernick hill. It is not visible from any of the houses in the southern settlement but can be seen from the majority of those in the western settlement with the exceptions of 1, 2 and 4 to the far north and those in the southern compound. From the main western compound the window is in full view. The only house where this is not the case is the isolated house 3, closest to the Quoit and due west from it down-slope. We know that the main western compound is the earliest part of the hill to have been settled. The fact that the Quoit and its window box are both prominent and visible from here seems highly suggestive that the houses were positioned so as to be in view of the Quiot.
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