Two Bronze Age burial cists containing cremation burials alongside an inhumation burial and accompanying food vessels were discovered in 1953. They were found within a ploughed down round barrow in Cottier's Field during ploughing operations by Mr Ellis Corlett of Bishopscourt Farm, close to the high road between Kirk Michael and Ballaugh.


The excavations by B.R.S. Megaw provided a considerable amount of information concerning burial rituals, both cremation and inhumation in the Middle Bronze Age. Two fine decorated urns of the 'Irish Food Vessel' type were recovered broken, but have been pieced together and are now in the Kermode Gallery, Manx Museum. This was the first thorough examination in the Isle of Man of a Bronze Age burial mound.


In both parts of a massive double cist divided by a septum slab, the burials were accompanied by an 'Irish-type' bowl food vessel (Accession No. 7369 with the cremation and Accession No 7370 with the crouched inhumation). The whole appeared to have been covered by a barely visible mound some 17 metres in diameter. A radiocarbon date of 3560 +70 BP, recalibrated to 1810-1930 BC, was obtained.


The barrow survives as a ditchless, grass-covered bowl barrow with a diameter of 17 metres and a height of 0.4 metres. There is now no visible trace of the cists. When the barrow was surveyed it appeared to have been ploughed over many times, but still visible as 'gentle slopes.'