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The Tale of Boden Fogou
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It was in 1991 that I received a telephone call
from Tony Williams of Higher Boden. "Come
and see what I have found" he said.
There had been a tale for many years that 25
feet away from the apple tree in the hedge
there was a tunnel. Mr Williams and Chris
Hosken, both local farmers, had decided to
verify this story by probing the soil at the
25-foot measurement. Their probing revealed a
line of rocks at just the right spot. This was
duly reported to the Cornwall Archeological Unit (CAU) and a geophysical
survey report was produced which showed
numerous anomalies in the soil, one of which
was a long feature, thought to be a tunnel or
fogou.
 This started a dream for me
that, one day, I would be able to help
excavate the site.
It was not until twelve years later, on
October 14th 2003, when I walked onto the
site, my trowel at the ready, that my dream
came true.
Sadly Mr Williams did not live to see the
day, but Chris Hosken inspired us all over
the next four weeks.
Boden proved to be more than was expected,
for not only was the Romano British fogou
revealed with all the ditches, banks and
pottery that one would expect to find on a
site of that period, but also evidence of
the Bronze Age in the form of pottery
within a round house. 
Two quadrants of this were partially
excavated and in one of these were found
large pieces of thickly decorated Trevisker
style pottery with rims, which when
reconstructed may turn out to be one of the
largest ever found in Cornwall with a
diameter of about 34 cm at the rim.
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 The fogou tunnel, when
excavated, revealed a magnificent structure
with walling up to 1.5 m high and a scatter
of huge lintel stones lying haphazardly
just above the floor level. A possible
human tooth was found lying near the floor
surface next to pieces of black burnished
ware pottery.
Evidence of burning and numerous pieces of
pottery were found in all seven trenches
excavated and to crown the whole dig three
Roman coins (provisionally dated to the 2nd
and 3rd centuries AD), three spindle whorls
made from clay (at first thought to be big
beads as the middle hole is rather small),
a possible copper alloy brooch, and one
small blue complete glass bead.
We look forward with great expectations to
the report and hope it will be possible for
more excavations to be funded in the near
future. |
Margaret Hunt
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