Bemaken Friary Enclosure

Period: Late Medieval

NGR Easting: 224900

NGR Northing: 470100

Description: Medieval enclosure.

According to accounts prepared less than twenty years before the dissolution came into force on the Isle of Man, Bemaken Friary was recorded as holding a 'quarter of land comprising 40 acres enclosed by a ditch'.

J.K. Barratt in 1964 suggested that the course of the stream just to the north of the friary was likely to have been little changed since medieval times, and also noted that a substantial ditch, nearly a metre wide and lined with flagstones, had once lain approximately parallel, to the SE: the distance between the two watercourses is about 450 - 460m. He proposed that, assuming the main road was on the line of a medieval boundary, that the friary's 40-acre holding could have been accommodated within the space formed by these three features, with the fourth side of an irregular rectangle lying about 360 - 370m SW of the road.

The stone-lined ditch to which he referred is now piped under ground for much of its length. It should be noted that the antiquity of the main road past the friary is unknown. It may also be of interest to note that the Friary farm quarterland in 1865 amounted to 140 acres.

The grid reference provided lies at the centre of Barratt's notional landholding.

View map location on Archaeology Data Service

Site & Monument Type: enclosure; friary

Category: National Monuments Record: Archaeological Sites [single-site]

Site ID number: 0012.00

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