The Braaid
Coordinates: 54 ° 9 ′ 26.5 ″ N , 4 ° 33 ′ 59 ″ W.
The Braaid was originally thought to be a stone circle , accompanied by two rows of stones , from the Stone or Bronze Age . The ensemble is located in the fields of the Marown parish, west of Douglas halfway to Foxdale in the southern Isle of Man . Today the complex is believed to be an Iron Age round house and two nave buildings of Nordic origin from the 11th or 12th century, with an unusually high proportion of stone.
The round house was about 16.5 m in diameter. Its shape is determined by massive stones that formed the outer edge. The double walls were made of stone with a filling of earth. The roof consisted of plagues of turf that lay on rafters supported by wooden posts.
Longhouse 1 was a hall measuring around 20.0 × 9.0 meters without partition walls. With these dimensions, it is twice the size of normal houses of this period. It had curved peat outer walls. The headboards were made of wood.
The statement that the nave housed 2 animals is based on stone boxes along the north wall. At around 18.0 × 8.0 meters, the building is only slightly smaller than nave 1 but has straight walls. The roof was lower and lighter.
The size of the buildings indicates that the place was more than a farm. The Braaid is the best preserved structure of its kind on the Isle of Man. Excavations were carried out in 1942 by HJ Fleure and M. Dunlop and in 1964 by Peter Stanley Gelling.
literature
- Christine Fell, Peter Foote, James Graham-Campbell, Robert Thompson: The Viking Age in the Isle of Man: select papers from the Ninth Viking Congress , Isle of Man, July 4-14, 1981 . London: Viking Society for Northern Research 1983, ISBN 0-903521-16-4
- Fleure, Herbert J./Dunlop, Margaret: Glendarragh Circle and Alignments, The Braaid, IOM In: Antiquaries Journal 22, 1942, 39-53.
- Peter S. Gelling: The Braaid Site. A re-excavation of one of the structures. In: Journal of the Manx Museum 6, 1964, 201-205.
Web links
- Photos on Flickr
- Isle of Man Guide: The Braaid