The Nine Maidens
OS grid ref:- SW 435351
The Nine Maidens otherwise known as the Boskednan Stone Circle , is situated in an isolated position on an extensive stretch of moorland 4 metres northeast of Penzance.
The original monument is thought to have been composed of 22 or 23 stones, the stones averaged around 1.3 metres ( 4 feet) in height with the tallest rising to 2 metres high.
It was recorded in the seventeenth century that 19 of the stones at the Boskednan Stone Circle stood upright, but at the beginning of the present century only 11 of these remained and of those, 6 stood upright, 2 were leaning and 3 had fallen.
The circle has been recently restored, with some of the stones re-erected in their original sockets. The surrounding gorse has been cleared and the drainage improved.
Stone circles such as the Nine Maidens were built in the late Neolithic or in the early Bronze Age. The first recorded mention of the monument in modern times, dates from 1754 and is found in the work Antiquities, historical and monumental, of the County of Cornwall by William Borlase, who recorded there were 19 upright standing stones. His grandson, William Copeland Borlase, carried out excavations at the site and discovered a cist and a funerary urn near the stone circle, dating from the early Bronze Age. Borlase described his discoveries in 1872 in his work Naenia Cornubiae, which concerns prehistoric monuments of Cornwall.
The Nine Maidens stone circle lies in open moorland with access via trackways from Boskednan.