The DELABOLE GIANT
Cornwall has many legendary Giants& there are many conflicting legends of giants whose gigantic deeds are,to this day marked by local geographical features,rocks caves& hollows. St Michaels Mount,for example is claimed to be the home of CORMORON, whose titanic boulder throwing battles with the giant of Trencrom,are marked by a huge boulder on the beach at Marazion.Another giant BOLSTER was vanquished by St. Agnes,huge stones near the town ,mark his remains.
The Cornish Giants that interest me ,seem to have all but vanished in the county,the giants of Cornish industry,the Tin Giants of the west,the Clay giants of St Austell,& the Slate Giant of Delabole
The DELABOLE GIANT is an underground giant producing world famous Delabole Slate, which has been quarried at Delabole for over a thousand years.I was commissioned in 2003 by Delabole school to build a Giant in the school grounds, from slate donated by the Delabole quarry.
BUILDING THE DELABOLE GIANT. Working with the school & Creative Partnerships, a site was identified in the school grounds to build the giant. although huge, he is an underground Giant, & only the very top of his head was to be visible peering above the ground.I was assisted by local sculptor & stone worker Ray Bowler & my son George, who was at that time working as a roofer with slate.
Our first job was to dig a large hole to sink the foundations, two sections of large concrete motorway drainage pipes. all our walls & stonework were based on local walling techniques, using delabole slate.
The giant can speak. the children can access a hidden chamber behind the left eye, where a buried speaking tube, transmits there voice to an underground outlet below onlookers feet.
Delabole Slate has been used for roofs, both locally & worldwide for centuries,so the giants head is crowned with a slate dwelling & roof.
His eyes are made from shards of domestic pottery,broken tea-cups,mugs, plates & bowls, collected from their homes by the school children.The eyes reflect some aspects of everyday life in the village?
It had been originally intended that the giant could be visited by both the children, their parents,the people of Delabole & the public through the small gate at the side of the school.
Unfortunately this gate is no longer in use. The school has kindly agreed to show visitors the giant, if they first telephone or contact the headmaster to make an appointment on 08140 212540
email head@delabole.cornwall.sch.uk
THE LEGEND OF THE DELABOLE GIANT
A very long time ago,before anybody can remember,in fact, a long time before there were even any people,long before there were even any dinosaurs,the Delabole Giant was born,deep at the bottom of a huge & nameless ocean,thousands of miles to the south,near a place we now know as the Azores,
In those days the world was a very differant place,& since then the Earth has moved many times,oceans have come & gone,continents grown, & mountains sprung up & then disappeared. Great storms slowly dissolved the mountains,turning them into silt & washing them into the sea,where they filled deep trenches at the bottom of these ancient oceans.These deep trenches were pressed by the heavy weight of the seabed to become the bones of the underground giants.
Gradually, over millions &millions of years,the giants pushed & shoved their ways deep under the earth.One of these giants finally banged his head against the Granite of Bodmin Moor,& poked his head out of the ground,at a place we now call Delabole on the North coast of Cornwall.
This was the origin of the Delabole Giant,who is a Slate Giant.Other underground Cornish Giants are the TIN Giants of Southwest Cornwall,& the huge white Clay Giants of St. Austell.
A Slate Giant is a very useful kind of Giant, & millions of years later,when people finally arrived at Delabole,they found shelter & safe places to live in the slabs of slate & deep cracks & caves that crowned the Slate Giants head.
Later on people found how easy it was to split the slate& build things with it.Slate was very useful for building houses & roofs,garden walls,churches,schools,paths pavements & a lot more. The village of Delabole was once made entirely of slate,even the clothes posts ,the tables& the benches were made of slate
For hundreds & hundreds of years,the men & women ,& even the children of Delabole quarried the slate,cutting & splitting the Slate Giants bones for people to build with.They even built a special railway to carry the slate to the coast,where ships carried it all over the world.Every town & village in Cornwall has some houses built from pieces of the Slate giant.Even today,if you split a piece of Delabole Slate,you will reveal a new section from that ancient ocean bed, & can be the very first person to touch it, since it was formed millions & millions of years ago! It does seem rather strange that the bottom of an ocean that disappeared so very long ago, can help us keep snug & dry in our homes today?
Nowadays new materials & methods are used to build our homes& the Slate Giant of Delabole is not quite as busy as he used to be. In fact,some people dont even know where he lives,with his huge slate body hidden underground,& only the very top of his head,just peeking out.
When he was underground it was completely dark & black,he did not need to see,he had no eyes,& was completely blind. But the Delabole Giant was such a friendly Giant & so useful to the people of Delabole,that they asked that he should be given eyes,so that he could see & share with us the glorious dance of the light. In a quiet little woods, behind the school,he rests & enjoys woodland life,& the changing skies & colours above the village of Delabole.
David Kemp Delabole July 2003
