Ronaldsway
Period: Bronze Age
NGR Easting: 229400
NGR Northing: 468635
Description: Bronze Age burial mound.
The Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1868 shows a marker at the grid reference given, together with the annotation, 'Site of Tumulus - Stone Cists & Urns found'.
GJH Neely (Inspector of Ancient Monuments 1932-46), writing in 1940, stated that a burial mound here was destroyed many years ago and that an account written about 1866 had recorded that it had contained a number of stone cists and urns with human remains (Neely does not cite the reference).
Neely also commented that observations recorded by Richard Townley might refer to this site. Neely is likely to have been aware of, and influenced by, the annotated Ordnance Survey 1:10560 map set maintained by his predecessor PMC Kermode, who noted "'Three fine barrows placed in triangular...' from Townley, I, 185" close to the OS site.
Richard Townley, a gentleman journalist who spent eleven months on the Isle of Man in 1789-90, described how, on September 12th, 1789, 'I had not gone far down the bye-road, before I discovered three fine barrows, in a large field: placed in a triangular form. They are so large, and so perfect, that it is astonishing, to me, that I had never heard them noticed'.
It would appear likely, given Townley's description and the open and generally flat nature of the landscape, that Neely and Kermode are correct in the assumption that the site recorded by the OS was one of the three burial mounds observed by Townley nearly 80 years earlier, although it is worth noting that the OS site lay 330m away from the road that Townley would have followed.
Geophysical surveys undertaken ahead of development, followed up by extensive area excavation in 2008 at Ronaldsway Airport did not reveal any remains in the area of this site that could be ascribed to it. It is thought that the area was subject to significant earlier disturbance during construction of the military airfield during 1943-44.
View map location on Archaeology Data Service
Site & Monument Type: burial mound
Category: National Monuments Record: Archaeological Sites [single-site]
Site ID number: 0108.00