Showery Tor facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Showery Tor |
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Showery Tor Cairn and natural outcrop
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| Location | near Camelford, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall |
| Architectural style(s) | British pre-Roman Architecture |
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Showery Tor is a cool rocky place in Cornwall, England. It's found on a ridge near Camelford on Bodmin Moor. This spot is special because it has amazing rock shapes and very old monuments from a time called prehistoric times.
Showery Tor stands out and can be seen from far away. It has a natural rock formation, about 5 meters (16 feet) tall, made of granite. This natural rock is surrounded by a huge, man-made ring of stones. This stone ring is called a cairn. It can be up to 30 meters (98 feet) wide and 1.2 meters (4 feet) high. A person named Christopher Tilley thinks the cairn itself is about 3 meters (10 feet) tall.
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What is Showery Tor?
Showery Tor is a unique place where nature and ancient human activity meet. It's a natural rock outcrop that people from long ago built a large stone ring around. This makes it different from other cairns, which are usually just piles of stones.
Why is Showery Tor Important?
Experts believe Showery Tor was a very important religious place. This might have been true during the Neolithic period (New Stone Age) or the Bronze Age. These were times thousands of years ago when people were just starting to farm and use metal tools.
No one has ever dug up the site to study it closely. So, we don't know if people were buried there. But its size and design suggest it was a special gathering place.
How Were the Rocks Formed?
The granite rocks at Showery Tor look a bit like another famous rock formation called the Cheesewring. They are made of separate blocks of stone. These blocks formed over a very long time. They were shaped by erosion, which is when wind and water wear away rock. This happened along natural cracks in the granite.
Scientists have used pictures taken from the air to learn more about Showery Tor. These pictures show how the structures are laid out. Showery Tor is special because it's the only natural rock formation that was used in this way by the people who built these ancient cairns.
Images for kids
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Showery Tor Ring Cairn
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Cairn from a distance
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View towards Rough Tor from Showery Tor Cairn
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Another view from Showery Tor
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Granite boulders on Showery Tor
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View towards Showery Tor and Little Rough Tor from Rough Tor
