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Daylight dwindles rapidly as I position myself within the granite circle near St Just. The granite stones glow in this sombre terrain, like ethereal watchers assembled about to observe our actions. Overhead, a blanket of brown bracken and gorse rises toward the prominent outcrop, the imposing rock outcrop that commands the bare skyline. After dark, this heath is reputed to be haunted by sprites and spirits, and reportedly Old Nick rides out in search of wayward spirits.

Unafraid by any otherworldly danger, we peer seawards, toward the smudges on the horizon that are the remote Isles of Scilly. The sky crack open and a cascade of amber rays washes over the islands. My guide, archaeoastronomer an authority on prehistoric astronomy, and I marvel. It is breathtaking a spectacle of nature which may have been enjoyed by the people who erected this circle 4,000 years ago.

An Ancient Winter Solstice Landscape

We have gathered at Tregeseal to explore the winter solstice. The focus of her studies centers on the relationship of Cornwall’s prehistory with the heavens, and she portrays the entire westernmost tip of Cornwall as an age-old winter solstice landscape. This, she says, is because of the spine of Cornish stone that extends in a southwesterly direction along the peninsula, toward the solstice sunset. If, for example, you position yourself at midwinter by the mushroom-shaped quoit – the dolmen-like tomb upon the moors south of Morvah – you will see the sun set over the distinctive tor on the western horizon. And in all likelihood this is exactly as the tomb's Neolithic builders envisioned.

"What superior place to honor the rebirth of the light than on the western tip, which points in the direction of the vanishing spot of the sun on the day of least light?"

Carolyn suggests that Tregeseal stone circle was intentionally placed to allow people to view the solstice sun going down behind the Isles of Scilly. “Seen from here, Scilly is a borderland. On a clear day with fair conditions, the isles look close up and just appear vividly. On different days, they’re entirely absent. The monument creators could have regarded Scilly as an otherworldly place, perhaps a spiritual domain, connected with the darkest day and the renewal of the light.”

Mysterious Monuments and Countdown Calendars

We pick our way through the shadowy copper-colored moor past prehistoric burial mounds and piles of mining slag to a enigmatic structure, which may be the UK’s only ancient row of perforated rocks. Unlike the stone at Mên-an-Tol a few miles away, it’s impossible to crawl through the stones at Kenidjack; these holes are only just big enough to fit my hand through and right down to the ground. Researchers remain baffled.

A proposed explanation is that the alignment might have operated as a kind of winter solstice countdown calendar, with the morning sun passing through the holes from late October until December and producing varying shafts of light in the stones’ shadows. “Feeling the warmth of that ray of sunlight in the frosty, dim moor gave me a visceral experience of how Neolithic farmers might have marked winter solstice,” she says.

A great number of prehistoric monuments are aligned to the rising or setting of the sun at midwinter or midsummer for it to be a coincidence. It stands to reason that ancient cultivators, who relied on the sun for light, warmth and the success of crops, would want to follow the sun’s journey. But in the modern era, the darkness of this time of year still weighs on our well-being, and so we anticipate the shortest day, that most shadowy day of all before the daylight hours begin to grow again.

Enduring Monoliths and Contemporary Celebrations

A bitter easterly is gusting, and strange moaning come from hidden cows as I hike through wet clover to pay a visit the solitary monolith, standing guard as it has done for millennia above the peninsula’s south coast. It is just one of scores of ancient monoliths that stand alone or in alignments all over the peninsula; less than a mile away are the renowned petrified dancers, maidens frozen in granite for breaking the Sabbath. I think about how for ages the stone has remained here, witnessing its panorama of the coastal waters: where once ancient boats would have sailed, now container ships and the passenger ferry pass by.

"This midwinter event revives the old Cornish custom of disguised performance, with its elaborate masks and costumes, folk singing and music of pipe, drum and fiddle."

A filmmaker's hypnotic film, which documents a full year in the existence of this stone, emphasizes the significance of its still and silent presence in the ever-changing landscape. “And I purposely opened and closed the film with the solstice,” he says, “because it is a time of sheer anticipation – the assurance of the ending of the dark and a sunny new year ahead.”

On 21 December, all over this region, people will be marking midwinter by walking to stone circles, sacred springs, ancient fortifications and prehistoric lookout points. Tours will be conducted to observe the sunset. Many will walk to standing stones in a kind of practice of reflection and renewal. Later, crowds will flock into the town for Montol, a midwinter festival that {dates only to|was established in|originated in