This fogou was known to antiquaries as early as 1842. In that year Buller refers to it as ‘one of those subterrain caverns situated in a small garden’, and as ‘one of those (fogous) which have never been inspected, so little interesting, no one, I suppose, thought it worth the trouble and expense of moving a mass of stones with which this entrance was enclosed, there being no prospect of discovering anything to justify the curiosity of him who undertakes the work’. The site, about half a mile from the northern coast of Cornwall, lies below the hamlet of Boscaswell, half a mile from the village of Pendeen, which consists of some cottages and many walled enclosures, large and small. One of these, that referred to by Buller as ‘a small garden’, oval in shape, adjoins the fogou at its eastern end. It forms part of a complex which contains a fogou-passage running from west to east, a creep, and a section now roofless extending into the enclosure. The latter undoubtedly perpetuates the site of a courtyard house into which the fogou originally opened.