Cloven Stones

Nearest town:
Douglas (7km SW)
OS reference:
SC429814
OS sheet:
95
Latitude:
54° 12' 14.27 N
Longitude:
4° 24' 32.06 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Articles

Folklore

Cloven Stones
Passage Grave
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jan 31, 2009

Apart from crowds of holiday-makers, with whom the author is in the main sympathetic, the Isle of Man is a splendid place for the quiet tourist in search of health, scenery, and antiquities. The people invest their beauty spots with legends – few are without them – which make heavy demands on the faith that can remove mountains: thus “it is said that when the Cloven Stone hears the bell of Kirk Lonen ring, the two sides clap together.”

The pleasant places which cater whole-heartedly for amusements and “attractions” are not in total effect much spoilt, though it is perhaps time to protest when the names Weeping Rocks, Wishing Stone, etc., are painted up on their respective rocks. Here is sophistication in Arcady, but it is generally done “with such an ingenuous air that it disarms criticism.” Most of the island however is innocent of “attractions.” Beautiful and neglected glens and highways are many...

From S.E.W.’s cutting review of ‘In Praise of Manxland’ by M. Fraser, in The Geographical Journal, July 1935.

Folklore

Cloven Stones
Passage Grave
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Nov 14, 2006

I think this must be the monument connected with this folklore:

Cumming says “In Douglas Road, about one mile from Laxey, there is on the southern side of a little ravine, a small circle of twelve stones, one of which, six feet high, is remarkable as being cloven from top to bottom. The tradition is, that a Welsh Prince was here slain in an invasion of the island, and that these stones mark the place of his interment.
Mr Feltham mentions the discovery in the centre of the circle, of a stone sepulchral chest or kistvaen, and in the view which he has given of it as existing at the time of his visit, there is a clear indication of a coved roof of stones, forming an arched vault in the centre of the mound.”

p350 in
The Monument Known as “King Orry’s Grave”, Compared with Tumuli in Gloucestershire
A. W. Buckland
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 18. (1889), pp. 346-353.

Sites within 20km of Cloven Stones

Like all websites everywhere, we use cookies.