This is a substantial hillfort, the banks of which are constructed from granite boulders. The construction is similar to others in the area but is considerably bigger than say, Chun castle. Also it appears to be formed of two concentric rings of ramparts and ditches (apparently there were four)
Within the interior is a dividing bank next to which is a stone built castle-like folly. The folly appears to built from stones robbed from the structure of the ramparts, they seem to be of similar size and there is a gap in the bank next to it.
The only obvious entance I could see was on the west side, there is a stagger in the ramparts here.
I got here by using a footpath about half a mile along the road from Chysauster. It's not a very steep climb but was very wet and muddy after 24 hours of heavy rain. I was the only person there in the hour or so I was here.
..Wild Harris of Kenegie {a gentleman's seat in the parish of Gulval, near Penzance} who was killed when hunting by a fall from his horse-- it was frightened by a white hare, the spirit of a deserted maiden, which crossed its path. His ghost, in his hunting-dress, appeared standing at the door of his house the night he was buried - the funeral, according to an old custom, had taken place at midnight. For years after he might be met in the vicinity of his home, and he and his boon companions were often heard carousing at nights in a summer-house on the bowling-green. Few then cared to pass Kenegie after dark, for his was said not to be the only spirit that haunted the place. Wild Harris's ghost was finally laid to rest by a famous ghost-laying parson, and put as a task to count the blades of grass nine times in an enclosure on the top of Castle-an-Dinas, an old earth fortification near, where he is said to have met his death.
p 105 in
Cornish Folk-Lore. Part II [Continued]
M. A. Courtney
The Folk-Lore Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2. (1887), pp. 85-112.
Mentioned by Craig Weatherhill, in “Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall & Scilly” (Cornwall Books - 1985, revised 1997 & 2000) – “133m in diameter, this Iron Age fort consisted of four concentric lines of defence. The inner most, a stonewall, has almost vanished, leaving little more than foundations. The next is another thick wall, tumbled but still 1.8m high in places. It is interrupted on the south-east side by a late eighteenth-century folly, Roger’s Tower, built of stone from the castle walls. The third defence is a strong earth and stone bank; the outermost, another strong rampart of earth, reaches 2.3m in height, but exists only around the north-western half of the fort. Traces of an outer ditch can be see, but the position of the original entrance is not known. In the centre of the fort are three circular structures which, in the light of discoveries at Caer Bran, may either be Iron Age round houses or Bronze Age ring cairns.”
NB – Not to be confused with the other Castle-an-Dinas Hill Fort in the Restormel district of Cornwall.
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