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Daylight dwindles rapidly as I am situated within the Tregeseal stone circle. The rock monoliths glow in this melancholy countryside, like curious, spectral figures gathered about to see our actions. Rising before us, a blanket of dried bracken and gorse rises toward Carn Kenidjack, the imposing granite tor that dominates the bare vista. During the evening, this heath is believed to be visited by pixies and demons, and reportedly the devil himself emerges seeking the departed.

Unafraid by superstitious otherworldly danger, we peer westward, toward the distant forms on the horizon that are the distant Isles of Scilly. The clouds crack open and a flood of amber rays spills over the islands. My guide, researcher a specialist in celestial alignments, and I gasp. It is stunning a spectacle of nature which may have been witnessed by the community who built this circle 4,000 years ago.

A Prehistoric Midwinter Vista

We have gathered at Tregeseal to discuss the year's turning point. Her research centers on the interplay of the region's ancient past with the heavens, and she characterizes the entire Penwith region as an prehistoric midwinter ceremonial ground. This, she notes, is because of the spine of Cornish stone that runs in a southwesterly direction along the peninsula, pointing toward the solstice sunset. If, for example, you position yourself at the solstice by the mushroom-shaped quoit – the dolmen-like grave upon the moors south of Morvah – you will see the sun set over the distinctive tor on the southwestern horizon. And probably this is precisely as Chûn Quoit’s Neolithic builders envisioned.

"What superior place to mark the rebirth of the light than on the Land’s End peninsula, which points toward the sinking location of the sun on the day of least light?"

It is proposed that this ancient monument was intentionally placed to allow people to watch the midwinter sun setting behind the Isles of Scilly. “Observed from here, Scilly is a threshold place. On a clear day with fair conditions, the isles look accessible and just pop. On different days, they’re entirely absent. The monument creators could have viewed Scilly as an otherworldly place, maybe a land of ancestors, connected with the darkest day and the rebirth of the light.”

Mysterious Monuments and Countdown Calendars

We thread through the shadowy copper-colored moor past ancient tumuli and heaps of industrial waste to a curious formation, which may be the UK’s only prehistoric alignment of perforated rocks. In contrast to the stone at Mên-an-Tol a few miles away, it’s impossible to crawl through the perforated monoliths; these openings are only just big enough to fit my hand through and very low to the ground. Researchers remain perplexed.

A proposed explanation is that the series might have functioned as a kind of solar event marker, with the sun at dawn passing through the holes from autumn until December and casting shifting rays of sunlight in the stones’ shadows. “Feeling the warmth of that golden beam of sunlight in the frosty, dim moor gave me a tangible understanding of how ancient communities might have experienced winter solstice,” she says.

A great number of heritage locations are aligned to the dawn or dusk of the sun at the year's extremes for it to be a accident. It makes sense that prehistoric farmers, who needed the sun for light, heat and the cultivation of crops, would want to monitor the sun’s journey. But in the present day, the darkness of this time of year still affects our well-being, and so we look forward to the shortest day, that most shadowy day of all before the daylight hours begin to lengthen again.

Ancient Markers and New Traditions

A cutting easterly is blowing, and strange moaning come from unseen cows as I tramp through wet clover to go and see the solitary monolith, keeping watch as it has done for countless generations above the peninsula’s south coast. It is just one of many of prehistoric stones that stand in isolation or in alignments all over the peninsula; less than a mile away are the famous petrified dancers, figures turned to stone for violating the Sabbath. I think about how through the centuries the stone has remained here, witnessing its panorama of the Celtic Sea and English Channel: where once Neolithic coracles would have sailed, now freighters and the island boat sail past.

"The Montol festival revives the historic practice of guise dancing, with its intricate disguises, seasonal songs and music of traditional instruments."

Christopher Morris’s hypnotic film, which documents one cycle in the presence of this stone, emphasizes the power of its calm and quiet being in the ever-changing landscape. “And I deliberately started and ended the film with the solstice,” he explains, “because it is a point of pure hope – the assurance of the passing of gloom and a promising new year ahead.”

On 21 December, all over the peninsula, people will be celebrating the turning of the year by walking to stone circles, sacred springs, hill forts and prehistoric lookout points. Excursions will be conducted to observe the sunset. Many will journey to standing stones in a kind of practice of introspection and new beginnings. Later, many people will congregate into the harbour town for the midwinter event, a winter celebration that {dates only to|was established in|originated in