What they found

Unique opportunity
The keeill excavated by Time Team on the Isle of Man was the only such site not to have been touched in previous excavations – particularly those conducted by Victorian and Edwardian antiquarians, whose methods left a lot to be desired by modern archaeological standards. As such, it offered a unique opportunity to investigate one of these ancient chapels, which were once found scattered right across the island.

The site is known as Speke Farm keeill, near Douglas in the south of the island. Until the 1990s the area of the keeill was farmland known to be the location of an ancient burial ground. In 1992 an application was made to construct a golf course on the land and, with the keeill identified by Manx National Heritage as a site of national importance, the seventh fairway was re-routed to avoid the site.

The area of the keeill was partially surveyed using geophysics at the time. That survey (coincidentally carried out by Time Team geophysicist John Gater) revealed an outline of the keeill structure, a surrounding ditch and bank, a further rectilinear structure and several other anomalies thought to represent burials. Further surveys carried out with modern equipment during the Time Team dig gave an even clearer picture of what lay beneath the surface, yielding a rich crop of potential targets.

A 1,400-year-old plait
These included six graves uncovered by the diggers in just one hour on the first day. One of them contained the stunningly well-preserved remains of a woman, including a knot of plaited hair – the first time that such a discovery had been made on a Time Team dig. Carbon dating revealed that the burial took place around 590 AD, making this the oldest Christian burial found on the Isle of Man.

The keeill itself is thought to have been built more than 400 years later, in the early 11th century. About four metres wide and roughly twice as long, it consisted of rough stone walls supported by turf embankments and buttresses with a narrow door in one of the side walls. At the eastern end, masses of quartz pebbles formed a surface around an altar. A small stone box alongside the eastern wall, about 40cm across, was thought perhaps to have been a repository for holy relics.

The keeill stood in its own defined enclosure with a large burial area beyond. It had been built on an earlier Christian site, which in turn had been erected on a much older Bronze-Age site, surrounded by an outer ditch with prehistoric burials inside. It is thought that an inner ditch, concentric with this outer one, was dug in the 18th century to protect the remains of the keeill when a road was built through the site.

See also The Ogham stone

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