What is a fogou?
Let's start with pronunciation: /ˈfuː.ɡuː/ for the IPA nerds, or "foo-goo" if you're a normal person. They're stone-lined underground chambers found in Cornwall, dating back to the Iron Age. Imagine yourself on a Cornish hillside, just on the edge of a settlement. It's probably foggy outside. A cramped stone passageway carved into the dirt waits before you. It leads to a damp, perhaps very large, dark space (sometimes more like a hallway, other times a belly in the earth) that I imagine would be filled with cooled air. It has no defensive capabilities--it would be a death trap under siege. There's no room for livestock, and why bother? They're also thought to be too damp for food storage, unless you're doing something intentional with natural molds.
Most of all, they're weird and alluring in their mystery and power. At least to me. A fogou takes a lot of effort to dig and set with stones when you're just an Iron Age village. People don't have time to just dig holes all over the countryside for the hell of it. However, the culture that left them for us is no longer here to explain the purpose of the fogous.
One of them was repurposed for an ammunition cache in WWII, but I propose a more wholesome use of the damp and dark hideaways: a place to post from. The humble poster requires an environment of nourishing darkness to do her work. I personally cannot write anything without the cold embrace of dirt and stone swaddling me.
Notes from the fogou. Posting underground. Side chambers lead to new discoveries. We're running a dehumidifier on a 30ft extension cable.