Context 153 - March 2018

C O N T E X T 1 5 3 : M A R C H 2 0 1 8 25 PATRICIA TUTT A pattern of building The modern estates of mostly characterless bungalows or houses are a striking contrast to what was built with the Isle of Man’s naturally occurring materials and distinctive building techniques. Historically, the building materials naturally occurring over much of the Isle of Man provided an abundance of stone, and a paucity of timber. This imposed severe restraints on the development of a vernacular architec- ture, and the rise of more sophisticated building skills and techniques. For such a small island (45km x 16km), the Isle of Man has a complex and fascinating geology.¹ The pre- dominant stone used for building was the Manx ‘slate’, a mudstone² which was difficult to work for general walling and difficult to cleave for roofing purposes. This led to a common use of mass rubble walling, often un-coursed and, of necessity, of considerable depth to accommodate large stones in a way that enable two vertical faces to be achieved. In the Isle of Man, the old builders’ rule of thumb was two foot (600mm), but wall thickness can vary from 450mm to in excess of 600mm, depending on local variations in the stone.When barns were built alongside farmhouses, longhouse style, they were invariably abutments and not bedded in. To some degree, the increasing sophistication in handling this stone can be traced in agricultural wall- ing techniques. Maxwell (1996) notes how Scottish dyking can provide a truer record of developing skills, as these walls tend to remain unchanged apart from periodic maintenance or eventual abandonment. The traditional and widespread ‘Manx hedge’ is a substantial sod bank with a rubble core, sur-planted with gorse, but some Manx stone field and many roadside boundary walls show the influence of dykers from Galloway and elsewhere, brought in by government to work on roadside walls, with the incorporation of through-stones to give strength, sloped bedding to encourage drainage, and projecting, sloping and loose bedding of copings to deter sheep from scrambling over them. Other details, such as the widespread and exuberant addition of quartz and other decorative stones as cappings, and the insertion of slits for sheep to pass through or recesses for bee boles, may have been introduced by incoming Cornish and other miners or agriculturalists. For much of the time under the Lords of Mann, farm-holders were only permitted to build using stone drawn from the land they held. As a consequence, each quarterland 3 on stony ground has its own small quarry. This restriction led to a marked local identity given by stone shape and colour, distinguished by the extent of oxides that are present, with Ballaugh stone having the reddest staining. Post-Revestment,4 this local character was retained until the advent of the railways and better roads, when land-based transportation of building stone became realistic. Until this time, the only stone to travel significant distance was imported for carving monuments, decorative details or the use of lintols in prestigious buildings. In addition to the mudstones, there is limestone (in the south, around Castletown), granite (localised volcanic Battery, Peel Castle: an ad hoc mix of local sandstone and mudstone, some of the latter in cyclopean blocks (Photo by the author) Footnotes ¹ See www.manxgeology. com (accessed 12.1.18), also Lamplugh, 1903; Pickett, 2001; Robinson and McCarroll, eds, 1990, and others, culminating in 2006 in Volume 1 of the New History ( The Evolution of the Natural Landscape, of A New History of the Isle of Man , Chiverell and Thomas. 2 Not a true slate, as it is insufficiently compressed. These stones are generally known as the Manx and Dalby groups of mudstones. 3 A traditional land division. Most significant farms held a quarterland; origin obscure. 4 Revestment – the Crown purchase of the Isle of Man from the Duke of Atholl in 1765.