Prehistoric flint scatter.
A single worked prehistoric flint was recovered from Ballahimmin by CH Cowley, from the 'Little Chapel Field'.
The description refers to OS Field no. 0813, which is centred at the grid reference provided.
The antiquary Charles Harry Cowley was an avid collector of worked flint and coarse stone artefacts revealed by agricultural activity, mainly on farms located around Peel, and occasionally from further afield. He was active from 1900 until 1943. His entire collection of artefacts, together with a daybook cataloguing his discoveries, was later donated to Manx National Heritage.
The site of a post medieval horse engine, which was recorded in the 1980s as a two-horse structure, the wooden beam of which survived and the building had been reroofed.
The site of an early medieval chapel or keeill and burial ground, thought to have been in use between circa AD500 and AD1000. The name of this keeill is lost and only the foundations remain now on a mound measuring 15 metres by 9 metres and standing 1.2 metres high. The dimensions of the keeill building appear to have been 4.5 metres by 2.75 metres, with only low wall bases surviving. The wall in the southwest corner is up to 1.5 metres thick. The doorway was in the west wall and there appeared to have been another in the northwest. The floor had been paved with thin polygonal slabs averaging 0.45 metres x 0.35 metres. 0.8 metres from the East wall, two upright slabs 0.6 metres high, one crossing the other, appeared to have formed the front and south side of the altar.
Excavation by Kermode in 1909-10 in the southwest corner exposed a small quantity of charcoal with fragments of thin pottery. More pottery remains were found to the east, and in the centre of the keeill 0.6 metres below the surface, as well as a pile of calcined bones. Excavations were also made near the east wall, where a layer of white quartz stones was noted and thought to perhaps have served as the base of the altar. Stones of a similar character supporting these to a depth of 0.9 metres. A few inches below the quartz stones was another pile of calcined bones.
Two worked flint flakes were found measuring 2.5 centimetres and 5.0 centimetres long. It is thought that the mound was an artificial mound used for Bronze Age burials before the site was selected for a Christian church.
Graves have been noted when ploughing in the fields both north and south of the keeill indicating the extent of the associated burial ground.
Undated mound.
The mound is not recorded on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1868. It appears on a small-scale plan drawn by William Cubbon (director of the Manx Museum 1932-40) and published in 1943. The grid reference provided here has been corrected using aerial photography.
The site was briefly investigated by Cubbon and Mr J Kennaugh, the farm tenant in May 1932. Several turves were removed, revealing a layer of broken and burnt stones; the use of an auger suggested that the whole of the mound was similarly capped with stones.
The mound has a maximum diameter of around 20m, and stands 1m high on a slope facing south. It consequently now has an oval outline. Geophysical survey undertaken by Bournemouth University in 2002 however suggests that there are remains of a buried circular quarry ditch.
The top of the mound now displays a shallow hollow, the age and origins of which are not clear.
Neolithic pottery.
A round-based later Neolithic cinerary urn of Ronaldsway type was found in a disused limestone quarry at Ballahott by Mr J. Kewley in 1906.
The precise findspot is not recorded, but the Ballahott quarry was centred at the grid reference provided.
The artefact is in the Manx National Heritage collections, accession no. 1954-0565.
The site of a Bronze Age bowl barrow described as having a cist. It is a fern-covered, ditchless bowl barrow much mutilated on the top. Its diameter is 14.0 metres and the maximum height is 0.6 metres. On the north side is a cist, orientated northwest to southeast, lined on all sides but the south with stone slabs. The cist measures 1.0 metre by 0.6 metres and is largely filled in, its depth now being 0.2 metres. It was formerly supposed to be the site of a keeill, but has been reinterpreted as a Bronze Age funerary site.
Iron Age settlement.
This group of raised platform earthworks was investigated by Dr Gerhard Bersu in 1941-42 and again in 1943-44. The two larger sites have a rath-like appearance, but investigation suggested to the excavator that the two larger earthworks represented massive timber-built roundhouses with turf-covered roofs supported on roughly concentric rings of posts and walls formed from thick earthen banks.
The two smaller earthworks were only subject to smaller-scale testing. One produced worked flint of later Mesolithic date.
Two samples from the few timbers that were retained provided uncalibrated radiocarbon dates falling in the 3rd century BC.
Subsequent discoveries of dwellings of a similar period in the British Isles have not replicated Bersu's interpretation, and it would instead appear that the concentric rings of posts supported a platform (bounded by the massive earthen bank) on which were constructed a succession of smaller timber roundhouses.
Prehistoric flint scatter.
A small quantity of worked prehistoric flint and a coarse stone axehead were recovered from Ballakaighen by CH Cowley, from the 'Big Stone Field'.
The stone referred to would appear to be that located in OS Field no. 0303, which is centred at the grid reference provided.
The antiquary Charles Harry Cowley was an avid collector of worked flint and coarse stone artefacts revealed by agricultural activity, mainly on farms located around Peel, and occasionally from further afield. He was active from 1900 until 1943. His entire collection of artefacts, together with a daybook cataloguing his discoveries, was later donated to Manx National Heritage.
