Killabrega

Killabrega – The Farm

Sunday 29th September 2013

I have read that Killabrega means Brega’s church.  There was formerly a keeill in the vicinity of the farm which may explain the name.  I assumed that Brega was a person but the only possible origin of the name seems to be “a petty kingdom north of Dublin in medieval Ireland”.  Google’s other suggestions are 1. A port in Libya 2. A genre of popular Brazilian music 3. An Italian character actor who specialised in playing heavies in spaghetti westerns 4 A photographer.  At that point I gave up the search.  

According to the Manx Government website  “In 1995 Manx National Heritage widened its portfolio to include an abandoned, but still almost complete small upland farm at Killabrega; an addition to its mostly coastal properties. Much has been learned of the farm’s history from archival, photographic and field name evidence, and its place in the rural economy of the past is intriguing. The farm’s location, next to land in public ramblage and with commanding views over the Sulby Glen and beyond, provides spectacular opportunities to appreciate the Manx landscape.”

We took Sue Cannell’s book “Rural Architecture in the North of the Isle of Man” with us and it was invaluable in identifying the various buildings.

First, Tim’s photo of the front of the farm as we approached.   The building on the left is a barn (1) and the small enclosed field, behind and to the right of the building, is described as the orchard.

On the gable end of the barn (1) were two protruding stones with holes bored in them.  I wondered whether they were for tethering animals but Sue Cannell explains that they were used for securing the ropes that tied down the thatched roof.  I had only seen rectangular pieces of slate (jutting out higher up on the walls) used for this purpose before.  But the gusts of wind were so strong at times that it was hard to keep my camera steady – so perhaps the roof needed to be tied on extra securely.

There was no evidence of fruit trees in the orchard, just some ashes, hawthorn and sycamore and one little elm.

On closer inspection it became apparent that the little elm was the remains of a large elm.  The original tree must have blown down, just leaving a large splinter of trunk with some bark.  The small elm had grown from the “splinter”.

Few of the trees had survived unscathed.  There was a semi-hollow ash, which had lost most of the centre trunk which was now rotting away.  And this ash, which appeared to be about one quarter of a hollow tree.  It is amazing that these trees have survived and that bits of them are still growing.

In the field on the southern side of the orchard was this old bath, an example of Manx recycling.  I have lost count of the number of old baths that I have seen in the fields.  They make useful drinking troughs for sheep and cattle.  The building in the background is the threshing barn.

The interior of the threshing barn.  The mechanism was driven by a one horsepower horse mill.  A Manx pony would have walked around the circular raised horse walk behind the building to turn the gearing and power the mill.

The interior of a building marked in the book as “Cattle”.  This bwaane (cow or cattle house) was built into the slope and we were standing on the bank behind the building.  Sue Cannell writes that “ . . . its size indicates that it may also have accommodated the Manx pony or other small animals.”

The front of the “Cattle” building with the Thie veg (small house) or outdoor loo on the right.

At the other end of the building was the dog house!  

In the main group of buildings there are also two houses and a second barn.

Very little remains of the larger house.  There used to be an interesting choillagh (kitchen fireplace) but the gable end containing the choillagh collapsed after Sue Cannell had completed her thesis.

Further up the slope, looking down on the other buildings in the main group, is the smaller house.  It is more recent than the large house and was probably built for the farmer’s son in the middle of the nineteenth century.  This photo (taken through one of the windows of the smaller house) shows the gable end of the second barn (2).

Some distance from the other buildings was a ruin marked “bothy” (basic accommodation for temporary farm workers) which was also used as a third barn.

Upright slate flagstones were used to make stalls in barns (1) and (2).  They were also used at Killabrega for a more unusual purpose – as fencing.

It is possible to identify most of the buildings from this last photo taken from the slope above the farm.  On the left of the photo is the smaller house.  Below that, in the centre is the larger house, with the second barn (2) behind it.  Below, and to the right of the large house, is the threshing barn.  The square building attached to the threshing barn was the grain store - and to the right of those buildings you can just make out the circular wall around the raised horse walk.

On the extreme right, in deep shade is the thie veg and bwaane.  The bothy was too far from the other buildings to include in the photo and the barn (1) by the orchard is hidden behind the trees below the threshing barn.