Bronze Age burial mounds.


The Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1867-8 shows two earthwork mounds in this locality, positioned either side of the road from Hillberry to Little Mill. One is marked as a 'Tumulus' and the other as 'Tumulus (Urn found)'. The grid reference refers to a point on the road roughly equidistant from both sites.


These mounds may be those referred to by Oswald ('Vestigia', 1860) as 'near to the mountain gate of the Cronk-na-Mona Road, a group of barrows'.


The mound to the north of the road was described by T Kneen, leading an excursion of the IoM Natural History & Antiquarian Society in 1892 as 'levelled'. A Royal Commission field inspector in 1955 however records it as a 'rather spread ditchless grass covered bowl barrow with diameter of 20m and minimum height of 0.9m', with some stone content, nevertheless classifying it as a mound rather than a cairn. By 1969 it is described as 'ploughed out'; despite this, the site is apparent as a faint cropmark (2016).


The mound to the south of the road is noted in 1892 as 'on a slight slope,...now almost levelled by cultivation; its outline, however, could be traced, showing a diameter of about 16 yards.' In 1955 it was reportedly 17m in diameter and stood 0.4m high, with a boulder on top which appeared to have been recently disturbed or placed there.


During the 1990s, topsoil was spread in the field, but the mound was avoided and left undisturbed.


Although the Ordnance Survey records the discovery of pottery at the site, no corresponding object, or sherds thereof, have been identified in the Manx National Heritage collections.