A fogou (pronounced foo-goo) is a mysterious type of Iron Age structure found only in Cornwall. They are long trenches about 2 meters deep and 1.5 meters wide, stretching from 11 to 30 meters in length; some include side chambers or end chambers. They are lined with dry-stacked stone walls leaning inwards at the top, and then covered over with large stone slabs at or below ground level. As time has covered their entrances with debris, many are completely invisible until they are accidentally dug up by plows, miners, or archaeologists.
These may have been used to hide in, to store food, for ceremonial purposes, or a combination thereof. They generally appear to have been built so that the entrance faced into the prevailing winds, which may support the idea that they were inhabited or used for curing meat, but they did not generally have a second entrance, resulting in limited air circulation. They sometimes contain remains of pottery, animal bones, and/or stone balls (petrospheres), but not consistently nor to the extent that these give strong clues as to their purpose -- nor can these items be consistently dated to be certain that they were part of the original use of the structures.
Despite the limited geographical range, there are a dizzying range of local names for these; depending on where you are, they may be called a fogou, foggo, vug, vow, giant holt (a holt being an animal den), or a fuggy hole.
In Cornwall any souterrain (Iron Age underground gallery) might be called a fogou, but archaeologists reserve the term for the specific form described here.
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