Gothvos Godhvos Jonathan Polkest

Gwennap Pit, Nr Carn Marth Redruth
An Opportunistic subterranean collapse creating an amphitheatre in which John Wesley would presumably have spoken from the lowest tier.

In Cornish Archaeology no 33 1994 HENDHYSCANS KERNOW. There is a fascinating and well researched paper by Ann Preston - Jones :Decoding Cornish Churchyards in which she looks in detail at churchyards in Cornwall, to see exactly how many are curvilinear, and to see wether it is possible to substantiate the claim for a very early 5 - 7th century origin which most church sites boast.
Churchyard plans are examined and discussed. This is very interesting from the point of view that Cornish languages survival owing in part to a playtext coming to light in Wales where it was presumed to be written in Welsh. Many of the Cornish plays that survive are miracle ordinalia, telling of Biblical/ Old Testament stories usually enacted in these circular churchyards (where the players could respectfully appear to be dissociating with their pagan origins whilst remaining in blissful physical contact with the sacred ground) I'm taking my cue from the contemporary phenomena of Tourism, how tourists are an initially distrusted but an economically vital element in which gradually displace the original inhabitants by becoming more business like and welcoming as a vital economic reality. On one level this could be seen as a cyclic action which assumes the unique character of each generational wave of those who are visiting and those who are hosting, changing places or moving on but gradually creating larger and smaller societal impact which gradually transform the perceived demographic, there is a romance inferred about the old ways, the old boys, the dialect and attitudes but these become shared memories, an imagined past, sepia tone nostagia.

St.Just Plen an Gwarry

As far as I know there is no evidence of a church adjacent to this Plan - an - Gwarry, or Playing Place.
Critically there exists no specific model of performance occuring everywhere under all circumstances. Nor is it easy to specify limitations on what is treated potentially as performance.
If "universals are desirable they may be identifiable in didactic processual models arguing about the validity of one or a group of genres against the validity of another single or group of genres. Origins and digression is unavoidably met head: on The St.Just Plan an Gwarry is a theatre outside of theatre, it is a place evolved from Gothvos, performances take place there in different cultural settings though not all are named performance, events and activities take place there by unidentified and known scholars. We may be inside the boundary of the anthropologists field. Victor Turner; Are There Universals of Performance in Myth, Ritual and Drama Essay 1985



The Moment and the Continuum.

Kernow or Cornwall, the source of this venture is dominated by a geological spine of huge granite bosses (plutons).

 The five main ones are Bodmin Moor, Hensbarrow, Carnmenellis, West Penwith, and the Isles of Scilly. Lesser granite intrusions occur at Tregonning Hill, Carn Brea and Carn Marth in the west, and Kit Hill and Hingston Down in the east. Further west beyond the Scillies there is a submerged pluton beneath the sea area Fitzroy.

North Iron - South Lead - East Tin - West Copper.

 Associated with the granite bosses are extensive areas of metamorphic aureole – surrounding rocks which have been altered by the heat of the intruding granite. Mineralization occurred during the cooling of the granite and metamorphic aureole, resulting in  the intrusion of tin and copper in lodes (seams) running east–west, and lead, zinc and iron in lodes running north–south. At a later stage some granites were altered, the most widespread instance being the formation of Kaolinite (china clay) which is found most extensively on the Hensbarrow granite. 

Lizard. 

Away from the granite areas the surface geology of Cornwall comprises three main elements. The oldest rocks in Cornwall, likely to be Pre-Cambrian in origin, are found on the Lizard peninsula. Most of these rocks have undergone subsequent 

metamorphosis and the Lizard Complex is a nationally important mass of intrusions, most notably serpentine, gneiss, schists and some granite. 

In the far northeast of Cornwall are Carboniferous rocks forming the western edge of the Culm Measures which characterise extensive areas of west Devon. These deposits contain black shales, sandstones and thin limestones.

Mylor Slates. 

The underlying geology of most of Cornwall, however, consists of Devonian rocks. There are slight variations between the Lower, Middle and Upper Devonian beds, but generally these Killas, as they are known, are characterised by clays, shale, slates, 

siltstones and sandstones. 

During Pleistocene times Kernow was in a periglacial zone subject to freeze/thaw processes. In the post-glacial period Cornwall has been subjected to sea level rise, resulting in a coast of submergence. Extreme low tides expose submerged 

forests at several localities (e.g. Mount’s Bay) and submerged prehistoric fields (e.g. on the sand flats in the Isles of Scilly).  Rias, or drowned rivers, are another feature of the submerged coastline (e.g. the rivers Fal, Fowey and Helford). 

Discarded Spoil Cairns: Signifying the entropy or Amplifying it.
Often assumed to have but one function: superfluos material awaiting dispersal or stripped of purpose. Homogeneous stuff with which to fill a void / ballast. Our ground is dense in mineral and message, one persons logic is another persons confusion. The Fly Tippers Hiekku:' Tip that rubble there'. Not necessarily untouched by hand or disconnected from its author the heaped performative, from scattered boulders to placed stones, those placed by "nature", offering shelter and enlightenment to a spectrum of species. No sooner the pillar of stone is constructed it becomes a system of orientation, growing up and declining into a spiral of equilibrium.

Pure Purposefulness at Boscawen ûn Stone Circle
Although the taking of this photograph lacks a little of the theatre of ritual observed sans adjustable analogue film equipment, the site's spatial qualities conspire to create a neutrality that defies the idea of a sacred site with a geographic, geometric historic and semiotic perspective, just what is originally intended and what has evolved here is not obvious to the limnal surveyor. The nineteen stone uprights encircle the leaning shardlike stone in the mid ground directing its angled charge in a North Easterly ascent. Theres an interesting elliptical emphasis on the circles position to the leaning central long stone, the perspective is remodeled for the diameter of the ellipses as if they were arranged around a natural compositional shadow from a strong light source in the South West. The photograph is taken from the one stone in the circle which appears to be entirely quartz. From the perspective of gradual and increasing propinquity,the site itself, bordered by pockets of intensive agriculture and vicious old furze hedges rests in an arena of bouncing turf and erratic rabbits. Circumnavigating the spectacle to a satisfactory degree is not possible but the best visual effects are seen from the auditoria of the walking eye when standing to the north west of the enclosure which is partially masked by blackthorn and old furse bushes, the trick of solitude requires patience and timing. The site attracts a lot of votive amulets and tokens, a cause of certain concerns about my own praxis which attracts nothing but criticism. The chronological line from Greek Theatre to Roman Arena onwards to playhouse provides no accomodation for such a structure. 

Roger Davisons Tremadhevas.