The Home Of Daniel Gumb – A collapsed house hidden beside the Cheesewring

The Home Of Daniel Gumb – A collapsed house hidden beside the Cheesewring

I have been threatening to get this post live and I have finally managed to find the time to get some of these photos added to my personal blog. Now if this isn't a post which is worthy of some inspiring drawings to come at a later date then I don't what is!

One summer afternoon when walking on the Bodmin moor with a friend we set about going for a walk up to Cheese Wring. Now if you are unfamiliar with the Cheese Wring which is close to the Minions, it is a set of ancient stones stacked on top of one another. You may also be surprised to know that this rock is completely natural, but this post isn't about the formation of these stones – it is about the formation of another a pile of stones which lay partially buried beneath the hill.

The Steep Walk Up a Hill

After tucking into a hearty meal at the Cheesewring Hotel, I and my friend set about walking up to the top the Cheese Wring, on the journey up the steep bank and after scrambling over some large granite boulders we arrived at the structure. It's not a new structure to me if I am perfectly honest, I dismissed as being something far more mundane than it actually was. To look at, you would assume it to be a small indent created to shelter the stonemasons and the quarry workers from the harsh weather when the land was worked for its stone and other resources. Saying it was a shelter is part truth, but as I come to learn it was much more.

What Was It

As we sat around the shelter in the sweltering august sunshine we looked inside what we thought was the quarrymens' shelter. No deeper than a few metres with basic seating, it would have made an ideal stone canopy in the grim winter months. What we were actually sat in wasn't shelter, it was an entrance to a 1700's eccentrics stone mason's house. The home was dug from the earth and hewn from stone.

Daniel Gumb's Stone House

When I stood on top of the shelter that day something looked a little odd to me, it looked like an adit or some sort of entrance to a mine that had collapsed so I came back and did a little bit of research and that is when I found out that this was the home of a man called Daniel Gumb. Daniel Gumb was a mason, astronomer and an eccentric that must have loved his solitude. He lived in that now collapsed hillside home with his family according to other sources.

The mason's house was dug from the ground and a giant slab of stone was used to act as the roof and ceiling. I'm glad I wasn't there when it eventually caved in.

Where is his house | by the CheeseWring

Where would the surprise be in handing it to you on a plate – besides on not entirely sure. The Home of Daniel Gumb is somewhere on the left-hand side of the Cheesewring as you approach it from the minions car park.

Daniel Gumb's House Entrance

Daniel Gumb's House Entrance - side view

Daniel Gumb's House Top Collapse

Thank you for reading this post!

I will intend on adding more adventure photo's in the future