Special Issue: The Isle of Man
It is said that the Isle of Man is protected by the sea god Mannan, who drapes his cloak of mist across the island whenever invaders appear.
Perhaps they are right; the Vikings, when they came, sometimes settled here instead of simply invading, and the cloak reappears, occasionally - often when the British royal family appear.
When I visited, the mists atop the hills inland and the mists rising from the sea never quite met in the middle - Mannan clearly did not consider me an invader, coming as I was by invitation, to speak at the Manx Literature Festival.
Half way across the Irish Sea, and pointedly not part of the UK, the Isle of Man has a rich history, and I was adamant I’d see some of it while I was there; so join me, as we explore this proud and ancient isle.
There is so much to see on the Isle of Man, so I will restrict this to three sites. A Viking homestead, a ruined Cathedral, and a towering Castle.
The Braaid
Nestled in the Manx countryside, about 3 miles from the coast, The Braaid is a vast collection of jumbled stones jutting out of the hillside with a narrow stream cutting a deep but precise gash across the site through the heavily ridged earth.
The Braaid was long thought to be a ritual landscape, a stone circle combined with a long stone lined pathway. This is an excellent example of archaeologists looking at something, shrugging and going “this was probably for ritual use?”. These days, after much more work, the prevailing understanding of the site is that it’s a homestead, and an unusual example of Iron Age and Viking architecture on one site.
To the south, cut off from the other structures by the small stream, the remains of an Iron Age round house lurch out of the ground, the stones tilting, drunken, but still rising high out of the earth
Two stones, leaning into each other, and slightly taller than others nearby, form what feels like an entrance to the site.
It is believed that, after many years as a grand dwelling, this Iron Age Roundhouse was re-used as a home for livestock and other animals, providing a safe shelter from the storms that regularly blast this small island in the middle of the sea.
North of the roundhouse two Viking longhouses rake long lines across the landscape, their walls constructed of double rows of large stones, sandwiching thick turf walls for insulation.
The smaller one, to the west of the site, is believed to have held the communities more important animals, such as horses, with evidence of stalls along one side of the longhouse.
The larger longhouse, to the east, sits at an almost 45 degree angle to the smaller one, with walls that curve inwards at the ends, like a great ship upon the hillside. Nothing is known about the people who lived here, over a millennia ago, but for them to have such a grand homestead means they would have been very powerful indeed.
Peel Castle & Old St Germain’s Cathedral
With fortified walls skirting the perimeter of St Patricks Isle, Peel Castle is an intimidating sight. The island was originally home to an Irish monastery, which first appears in records in the 700’s as the result of a Viking attack on the island, but Peel Castle has changed a lot through the centuries, and has since been the home of kings, the residence of courts, a military stronghold, and a holy site.
Across the island, ruins of each of these phases of existence are scattered; a grand hall here, a tower there, the ruins of a lookout, a roofless chapel. Even the ground beneath your feet undulates with a millennia of earthworks, burials, and rubble.
But I know what you are here to see… The Cathedral.
St Germain’s Cathedral contains no visible remains of the earlier, likely wooden, Celtic monastery, being instead a Viking foundation, much altered through the ages, particularly in the 1200’s.
Let us begin in the East end, where the chancel looks out over Peel harbour, the ranks of tall windows framing a stormy sky and steel-grey sea.
This place is imposing, and holy, even centuries after it was allowed to fall into ruin.
To the south, the remains of a piscina.
To the north, a niche for a tomb.
To the west, the looming tower, filled with loudly cawing crows.
The island was almost empty, during my visit. I spotted one other visitor, far off, across by the round tower, and so the silence of decay was broken only by the crows, and the rushing of the waves against the rocks below.
I headed around the cathedral, skirting the tower and its safety cordons, to the west end, her arcades open to the air, a graveyard founded among the ruins.
The west window, simple tracery still intact, offered glimpses up at the grey sky, as it began to rain.
The lone visitor I had previously spotted left the island then, leaving me alone with the crows and the sea and these ancient weather beaten stones.
The texture caused by the endless sea air is incredible, with whorls and streaks chiselled into the once-smooth sandstone by a never-ending procession of long forgotten storms.
Looking back into the church, the tumbling plaster reveals rubble walls, abandoned rooflines come into focus, and the modern city of Peel peers through the empty windows.
There is a north door in the old nave, and through it a small rut in the ground, a path worn into the ground through human passage, which curls along between the edge of the nearby earth mound, and the wall of the cathedral, leading to the north transept.
Unlike the south transept, the north transept has a door, which would have led to the monastic living areas, and through it are beautiful views south through the crossing.
It’s clear, looking at the chancel to the left, how much higher it is than the transepts. So let’s see what lies beneath it.
Heading east again, it’s time to pick our way through the complex monastic ruins, little rooms off of little rooms, all so ruinous and jumbled as to render their purposes incomprehensible even to expert eyes.
If you stick to the wall of the cathedral, however, and use it as your guide, you find yourself here, at the entrance to the crypt.
Down, down we go, on rain-slick steps, down into the dripping dark.
Here the floor is mud, pocked with puddles and channels carved by rain, the high vault overhead shining with moisture. This used to be a shrine holding relics, then a chapel, then a prison. Despite the windows, the darkness is heavy, and the thick stone walls muffle the sound of the sea.
The weight of time is particularly heavy here. Let’s return to the surface.
While below, the rain had got heavier, and the ground, already riddled with collapsing rabbit holes, squelched underfoot. It was time to leave.
So there, the ruined cathedral, alone by the sea, sat silent through the storm. As it always has. It’s beauty evident amidst the decay, waiting, as always, for resurrection.
Castle Rushen
Looming over the centre of Castletown is Castle Rushen, formerly home to the Kings of Mann, and one of the best preserved medieval castles in the world.
Continuing the Viking legacy of these islands, the castle was originally built for a Norse King, with parts certainly dating back to the 900’s. The final Norse King of the the Kingdom of Mann and the Isles, Magnús Óláfsson, died in the castle in the 1200’s, and the castle passed between the Scottish and the English for centuries, even being attacked by Robert the Bruce.
Finally, in the 1400’s, the English claimed control once and for all, naming the Stanley family as Kings of Man, a title finally changed to Lords of Mann in the 1600’s, and sold to the English crown a few decades after.
The castle was continuously occupied for all of that time, with sumptuous private chambers provided for royalty situated directly beside intense military fortifications.
Having served as a residence, then a mint, from the 1780’s, it began to be used as the island’s prison, with the first prisoners being transferred here from the crypt beneath the ruined St Germain’s cathedral on St Patricks Island. These days the castle is fairly spartan, and despite some understandable weathering of the windows, and the ubiquitous buckets for catching drips from the roofs, is well maintained.
A legend says that the clock on the outside of the castle was gifted by Queen Elizabeth I, though what documentary evidence survives surrounding it’s installation makes that unlikely, if not impossible, Nevertheless, the clock face has been a feature of this former capital city for centuries.
When it was installed, the clock weights were hung in the most convenient room - the now former chapel. The altar would have rested on the two ledges, either side of the window, spanning the whole alcove.
A piscina, used for pouring wine and water directly into the earth, remains too, tucked away beside the vast clock mechanism.
The rest of the rooms are similar, some with complex and well-recorded stories, some with little information at all, each one accessed by winding corridors, spiral staircases, and battlement walks.
From the outside, against the grey sky, it’s clear how imposing Castle Rushen would have seemed in the days of medieval warfare. Vast, and impregnable. A pillar of grey stone, reaching up, towards the sky.
