Cheesewring

The Cheesewring (Cornish: Keuswask^[1]) is a granite tor in Cornwall, England, situated on the eastern flank of Bodmin Moor on Stowe's Hill in the parish of Linkinhorne approximately one mile northwest of the village of Minions and four miles (6 km) north of Liskeard.^[2] It is a natural geological formation, a rock outcrop of granite slabs formed by weathering. The name derives from the resemblance of the piled slabs to a stack of "cheeses" in a traditional cider press.^[3]

Wilkie Collins described the Cheesewring in 1861 in his book Rambles Beyond Railways:

If a man dreams of a great pile of stones in a nightmare, he would dream of such a pile as the Cheesewring. All the heaviest and largest of the seven thick slabs of which it is composed are at the top; all the lightest and smallest at the bottom. It rises perpendicularly to a height of thirty-two feet, without lateral support of any kind. The fifth and sixth rocks are of immense size and thickness, and overhang fearfully all round the four lower rocks which support them. All are perfectly irregular; the projections of one do not fit into the interstices of another; they are heaped up loosely in their extraordinary top-heavy form on slanting ground, half way down a steep hill.^[4]

Located adjacent to the Cheesewring Quarry (which supplied the granite cladding for the structure of Tower Bridge, London) and surrounded by other granite formations, this landmark was threatened with destruction in the late nineteenth century by the proximity of blasting operations, but was saved as a result of local activism.^[5]