WHEN Nick and Jenny Hart scraped back decades of brambly undergrowth from a mysterious rocky field, they were astonished by what they saw.

‘It was a circle of stones and an embankment with a depression in the middle,’ said Nick, ‘clearly an ancient round house.’

Now that discovery has led to a £24,000 archaeological excavation into a possible Bronze Age settlement which is due to start later this month. Experts say the site at the Harts’ West Northwood Farm, near St Neot, could contain evidence of some of the first peoples to settle in Cornwall. There’s more on this story in the current print edition of the Cornish Times, on sale until Friday.