There are two Giant’s Quoits in Cornwall; the first – and most famous – is the table-shaped Dolmen better known as the Carwynnen Quoit found just outside of Carwynnen near Camborne. The second is an odd-looking rock formation found next to the road between St. Keverne and Porthoustock. This post is about the second of these.

View Larger Map

Currently located on an unnumbered road to the south of Porthoustock, this oddly shaped object is a single piece of granite – a Gabbro Tor – originally exposed to the world by the erosion of the softer rock it was encased in.

Originally the Giant’s Quoit stood approximately 300 meters away to the East-South-East overlooking the Atlantic below.

There are very few images of the the Quoit in it’s original location, however the Historic England archive does include this photograph of the Quoit on it’s original cliff-side.

But in 1967 it was moved due to the expanding footprint of the Manacle Point Quarry – a quarry that would eventually consume the majority of Manacle Point.

Giant’s Quoits.
These stood for hundreds of years at Manacle Point and were re-sited here because of expanding workings at the near-by quarry
1967

The rock to be mined was a coarse, large grained rock known as St Keverne Gabbro. This Gabbro was laid down in the Cambrian–Devonian period and, once mined, was used to construct various buildings in the area