...The Cloven Stones and King Orry's Grave

An exploration of two megalithic sites on the Isle of Man. The Cloven Stones was a burial chamber located in the village of Baldrine. The site consist of two large uprights and some smaller stones forming a forecourt to a tomb. The rest is under a mound that forms the front garden of a private house! Perhaps the owners did not know what was buried beneath it because in the Swarbreck Manuscript, written in 1815, is this report of an extraordinary discovery:

“Mr Millburne informed us that about seven years since, he with two or three miners opened the mount to a depth of five feet and discovered a human skull and some thigh bones, which from their uncommon size, must have belonged to a person of gigantic stature.”

King Orry's Grave is in two parts, one behind a house and the other across the road and up the hill. Both are the remains of Neolithic tombs about 5,000 years old. For nearly two centuries a tradition has persisted that the two parts of King Orry's Grave were connected but clear evidence for this has been complicated by the construction of the road and houses that now lie between them.

King Orry is an almost legendary character revered by the Manx as their greatest king, often referred to as a giant. He was King Godred Crovan, who seized the throne in 1079 and created the Kingdom of Man and the Isles stretching from the Irish Sea to the Outer Hebrides. Several monuments are named in deference to him, but there is no connection between the historical figure and these prehistoric remains.

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