20.06.2026

For a small island of just over two hundred square miles, the Isle of Man is rich in history and myth. Long before the Celtic and Viking Kings, who had laid the foundation for independent governance, the ancient settlers had lived here with a knowledge of the outer world, thriving from the land and trading with those across the Irish sea in all directions. Like on mainland UK, evidence has come from archeological digs where axe heads from North Wales and Cumbria have been found.

My first encounter with Neolithic Isle of Man was a very unique burial chamber up on Meayll Hill at the south west tip of the Island. While most of the chambers here are of a trapezoidal Clyde style with linear passage graves, here at Meayll Hill the site is circular with twelve Cists arranged in pairs around the perimeter. From a small pull in spot on Darragh Lane, a short path brought me up to the circle nestled in the side of the hill. With views of the sea below, I had seen no better backdrop anywhere, with Bradda Head and the Port Erin Bay off to the north and north west and the Calf of Man to the south west.

Cairn circles within a landscape conjure strong feelings and their energies are very often easier to detect compared to other chamber layouts. I was immediately drawn to the centre six metres in, where half buried at it’s heart was a bright white quartz stone about forty centimetres across. It seemed a perfect and poetic placement to provide harmony and protection for those who had been interred here, but whether this stone was found here is questionable as there had been a central chamber at one time found under rubble.

I followed the edge of the curbstone mound to find each of the pairs of rectangular Cists, walled with slender Manx Slate slabs but with no capstones. Some of them had narrow veins of quartz running through them catching the light from the descending sun. Out to the west beyond the glinting sea was the faint profile of Mountains of Mourne on the Irish coast.