Search records

Peter Stanley Gelling

Epithet: Archaeologist (1925-1983)

Record type: Biographies

Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):

Peter Gelling was the second of three brothers. His father was headmaster of Braddan School and his mother managed the women's outfitting department of R.C. Cain's department store in Douglas, of which her father was the founder. Peter's paternal grandfather was a mining engineer who worked on the building of the Laxey Wheel.

After happy schooldays at King William's College, where he was head of school in his final year, Peter read Classics at Cambridge and then studied Assyrian for several years. He was a remarkable linguist, one of his pubilcations being Urartu: The Kingdom of Van and its Art, a translation from the Russian of 'Iskusstvo Urartu' by B.B. Piotrovskii.

His interest in archaeology began at Cambridge, where he re-founded the student archaeological society which had lapsed during the war. In the vacations he began a series of excavations in the Isle of Man which followed on from the work done during the war by Professor Gerhard Bersu. These excavations continued until the year of his death, and it is his contributions to the prehistory and early medieval history of the Isle of Man which constitute his main claim to be regarded as a Manx Worthy.

On leaving Cambridge in 1951 Peter spent two years as a schoolmaster in Leatherhead before being appointed to a lectureship in ancient history and archaeology at the University of Birmingham. He taught at the university until his untimely death in 1983, and an impressive number of his students are now in prestigious archaeological posts. He did a great deal of excavating in England, including Roman sites at Droitwich and Worcester and Iron Age hill-forts in Dorset and Shropshire. He conducted a 20-year-long excavation in Orkney, of which many Birmingham students have vivid memories; and there were some forays outside Britain, including four seasons in Cyprus where he helped research students to set up projects. The summer vacations had frequently to be given over to these activities, but the Isle of Man excavation programme continued throughout, in the Easter and sometimes in the Christmas vacations.

The first major discovery of the Isle of Man excavations was that the defended coastal sites, of which there are 22 round the Island, were originally constructed in the Iron Age and re-occupied much later in the Viking period. Previous to the Gelling excavations at Cronk ny Merriu, Close ny Chollagh and Cass ny Hawin these forts had been considered to be of Viking origin on account of Professor Bersu's identification, in 1946, of Viking houses in the Vowlan [Vollan] fort at Ramsey. Extensive excavations at Cronk ny Merriu (Santon) and Cass ny Hawin (Malew) showed that the fortifications predated the Viking houses, and at Close ny Chollagh there were well-preserved round huts at a lower level than the large rectangular Viking house, and these could be dated firmly to the early first century AD by the presence of a brooch belonging to that era. These excavations took place in 1952-57 and there is a summary of the findings in Peter Gelling's contribution to 'Man and Environment in the Isle of Man', edited by P. Davey.

Other Iron Age sites at which excavations were carried out in 1957-59 and 1960-61 were an inland promontory fort at Ballanicholas(Marown) and the hill-fort on South Barrule. The hill-fort was shown by radiocarbon dating to belong to the beginning of the Manx Iron Age, in the sixth century BC, and to have had a rare defensive feature, a timber chevaux-de-frise. The Ballanicholas site was occupied by a circular timber building dated by a penannular brooch to the late first or early second century AD.

The process of providing archaeological and historical contexts for previously undated monuments continued, and included the demonstration that two lowland sites, at Kiondroghad (Andreas) and Port y Candas, Ballacraine (German), were not, as previously thought, Iron Age round houses, but dwellings of the Celtic Christian period which were occupied in the years preceding the Viking takeover of the Island. Finds from Kiondroghad, where metalworking was evidenced, show clear connections with Irish sites of this type.

For the early medieval period the programme of excavations established the identity of an important group of summer pasture sites, the shielings, which continued in use from the Viking period into at least the fourteenth century. The first to be identified was above Block Eary, on the north side of Snaefell, where excavations took place in 1958-60. Subsequent fieldwork located another 47 such sites scattered round the Island on the slopes of the mountain range, near the 1000ft. contour. For the Viking period, in addition to the Viking levels of the coastal forts, there was the discovery of a miniature Viking house with associated farm buildings at Doarlish Cashen (Patrick). It was of particular interest that this establishment was on very marginal land, indicating the presence of farmers of Norse stock who were not able to choose the best land. This supports the evidence from place-names and runic inscriptions of a dense Norse settlement of Man.

There were, of course, many publications of excavations elsewhere, and also an important book on Bronze Age rock engravings in Scandinavia.Peter was a large and handsome man with a fine singing voice, who relished his participation in services at St John's Church, where he was a member of the choir.

After his death his ashes were placed with those of his parents in Braddan Cemetery. There is a Peter Gelling Library in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Birmingham.

Biography written by Margaret Gelling (widow).

(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.188-90.)

Culture Vannin

#NMW

Nationality: Manx

Gender: Male

Date of birth: 31 August 1925

Date of death: 9 March 1983

Name Variant: Gelling, Peter S.

Comments

Optional, not displayed

Manx National Heritage (MNH) will always put you in control of the information we send you. Read our privacy policy