The Braaid

The Braaid is an abandoned farmstead on a hillside looking over Glen Vine in the middle of the Isle of Man, where an Iron Age roundhouse and two Norse longhouses stand together in one field, a pairing found nowhere else on the Island. The roundhouse is a ring of 29 standing stones with walling between them and a single doorway, 13.2 metres across inside, once taken for a prehistoric temple and now read as a large late Iron Age dwelling. Up the slope lie two bow-sided longhouses of the kind built across the Viking world about a thousand years ago, 20 and 18 metres long and larger than any other building of their period found on the Island, one with stone stalls suggesting a byre. The farm on this marginal land probably failed and was later used for summer grazing. Cared for by Manx National Heritage, the site has interpretation boards and valley views; reviewers call it windswept and peaceful but warn of a sloping field, two stiles and sheep.