Porth Hellick Down Burial Chamber

A large and imposing Scillonian Bronze Age entrance grave, with kerb, inner passage and burial chamber all clearly visible.

This is one of the largest and best preserved of the distinctive burial chambers known as entrance graves.

Dating from about 2000 BC, Porth Hellick is the largest entrance grave in a scattered cemetery that includes six others, and two low cairns.

At the time when this imposing structure was built, most of Scilly comprised a single landmass. A steady rise in sea level has since engulfed the wide central lowlands, and with them the fertile farmland that provided the economic base for the first farmers, four to five thousand years ago.

As on Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor, the early farmers built their ritual monuments on the upper slopes above the cultivated land. This grave, like others on Scilly, lies close to the edge of a prehistoric field system.