Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:05:50.450Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Mull Hill Circle, Isle of Man, and its Pottery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

On Mull or Meayll Hill, a mile north-east of the Calf Sound, Isle of Man, is the remarkable megalithic monument known as the Mull Hill Circle. It is not a stone circle of normal type but consists of six T-shaped structures, each comprising two rectangular cists averaging 5 ft. 9 in. by 2 ft. 8 in., placed end to end with the inner end of each open and forming the head of the T, and approached by a short passage about 7 ft. long at right angles (the upright of the T). These pairs of cists are arranged in a circle some 50 ft. in diameter; each group distinct, with the cists placed tangentially and the passages leading radially outwards. They are so spaced as to leave a larger interval between the groups on the north and south to form two opposite ‘entrances ’. Apparently the entire circle of cists had originally been covered by a ring of stones and earth, the whole forming a ‘disc-barrow’, the bank of which contained chambers. There are vague indications of a central chamber or cist. The stone used in the construction of the monument was a local slate. No capstones remain to any cists or passages, but all appear to have been paved with flat slabs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1932

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 146 note 1 Liverpool University Press, 1904; second edition, 1914.

page 147 note 1 ‘The Neolithic Pottery of the British Isles’, Arch. Journ., lxxxviii. The Mull Hill pottery is here discussed in its relation to other finds.

page 149 note 1 Since the above was written some reconstructions have been made at the Manx Museum under Mr. Kermode's supervision and are shown in fig. 7.

page 154 note 1 For a full review of the type and illustrations of the Kilham and other bowls see the writer's paper referred to above.

page 154 note 2 Now in the British Museum. Greenwell mentions the fragments (British Barrows, no. ccxxxiv), but gives no drawing.

page 154 note 3 Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., lxiii, 56–7.Google Scholar

page 154 note 4 Ibid., 81.

page 155 note 1 See Archaeologia Cambrensis, lxxxiv, pp. 170–4. Presidential Address by Mr. P. M. C. Kermode.

page 155 note 2 Antiq. Journ., vii, 462.

page 155 note 3 Prof. V. G. Childe has recently made a comprehensive study of the problem in ‘The Continental Affinities of British Neolithic Pottery’, Arch. Journ., lxxxviii.