Alleged earthwork and stone circle.


An annotated set of 1:10560 Ordnance Survey maps curated by Manx National Heritage records antiquarian observations of archaeological and landscape features.


Two sites were recorded in OS Field no. 1048, which is centred at the grid reference provided, by PMC Kermode (director of the Manx Museum 1922-32). Kermode placed two crosses in the field, together with the words '?Mound' and 'Circle', without defining which site was which.


Kermode also refers elsewhere (Manx Antiquities, 1930) to Oswald's observation (Vestigia, 1860), of 'a ruin...with a circle of stones at its base' somewhere on Ballachrink farm. The Archaeological Commissioners' report of 1878 refers to a 'circle of stones and near to it, on the west is the tumulus' at Ballachrink farm; Kermode served as one of the commissioners.


Whilst the Commissioners may have been aware of entirely separate remains which were not noted by the OS a decade earlier, it is also possible that observations have partially or completely overlapped and led to duplication. Alternatively, it is feasible that the 'tumulus' referred to by the Commissioners is that recorded by the Ordnance Survey in 1867-8 (PRN 199.20), and that Kermode subsequently used this to place the 'circle of stones' in Field no. 1048 to the east.


No features could be identified by a Royal Commission field inspector in 1955, nor subsequently by staff of Manx National Heritage, at either of the sites marked by Kermode on the annotated map.