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| L.M. Mann... as dapper as Errol Flynn. |
In 1938, Glasgow’s Great Western Road
was being extended towards Clydebank when diggers came across some strange
archaeology at Knappers Quarry. There was a great deal of speculation and
excitement as to what the site might have been and Ludovic
MacLellan Mann came up with a possibility that caught everybody’s imagination.
He suggested it was a prehistoric druid’s complex where ritual sacrifices might
have taken place. It was certainly a Bronze Age timber monument, but, Glasgow
Council being Glasgow Council they treated the find with the same sensitivity with which they usually treat finds and buildings of archaeological and architectural significance - it was obliterated by high-rise flats before it could be completely studied. In fact, almost all of
Glasgow’s prehistoric sites have been destroyed by urban development. To take
one example, in Boydstone Road in 1973 a standing stone was removed so that the
road might be widened. The artefacts were found at Knappers
and two other sites relatively nearby – Kilbowie and West Dunbartonshire - were
aged between 4000 to 750 B.C.
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| Drawing by Mann. |
Any errors in the retelling are mine.
The Berand site contains a number of Mann’s booklets,
including Earliest Glasgow; A Temple of the Moon.
In 1930,
Mann published a book named Craftsmen’s Measures in Prehistoric Times,
which he followed up in 1938 with Ancient Measures; Their Origin and Meaning
in answer to critics of the previous work. Mann believed he had discovered two units of length
whose use in artefacts was universal. The implications of such a discovery, if
true, would be incredible. Mann investigated drawings, carvings, objects fashioned
from bone, antler, stone, baked clay, glass, vitreous paste and metal – prehistoric,
proto-historic and early historic – and all had been made by craftsmen strictly, he believed, to an unalterable unit of length. ‘To the enormous range of the system
in time must be added its surprisingly wide range in territory,’ he wrote.
The
objects measured came from major museums in Britain, Europe and America and the
‘universal’ measurement was found to have its equivalent in other measurements as diverse as Phoenician, French,
Danish, English, Scottish, Austrian, Chinese and Oceanic. It was later
found to have an equivalent in South America also. Mann concluded that; ‘Prehistoric man had
obviously to follow the dictates of a law stringently impressed upon the world.’
The obvious question is, if this law was stringently impressed, who might the impresser
be?
After a
lecture in March 1933, Mann immediately had his enemies, principally Professor
J.B. Bailey of Glasgow University, who more or less dismissed Mann’s findings
without following Mann's procedures for his measurements.
A very important part of Mann’s theory, if not the most important, was that the measures of length he believed he
had discovered symbolised measures of time and was derived from the length of
the year and other astronomical measurements.
Many
people know of Alfred Watkins’ The Old Straight Track, which points out
the interrelationship of ancient sites on the British landscape. Watkins book
was published in 1925 but Mann had written of such things as early as 1914. The
problem with Mann was that many of his projects were ‘left for another occasion’.
Archaeologist Graham Ritchie said of Mann, he ‘had a tendency towards losing
interest in a project before bringing them to conclusion’. In reading Mann’s Earliest
Glasgow it’s impossible not to detect a certain impatience in his style of
writing, as if he’s gone over the facts in his mind so many times that he can’t be bothered
going over his working-out for the sake of the first time reader. Earliest
Glasgow is not even a book but more of a booklet at only 38 pages. It feels,
at times, like reading an abbreviated form of notes which haven’t been
elaborated, or prose poetry where all inessentials are dispensed with. Mann’s
suggestions are very poetic. I’ll quote at length from Earliest Glasgow.
First of
all, names; Glasgow and the Clyde.
‘Glasgow is rich in places named after the Moon divinity; an
association of ideas suggested by the bend in the Clyde... indicating prolonged periods during which lunar worship was
carried on.
To say that Mann was obsessed with the past of Glasgow is an
understatement. He believed in an intelligent, artistic, philosophical pagan
ancestry for Glasgow and believed he had discovered the occult framework of the
city in the obscure origins of roads, church, cemeteries and place name. It was
psychogeography before the word was invented.
‘At Glasgow the lunar temple was placed on the rising ground nearest to
the apex on the river’s bend and above the flood plain... Its strength lay in its
sanctity... The suffix in the word Glasgow, “gow or cu” and its variants, is said to
signify “dog,” and also “smith,” but it was moreover one of the names given to
the Moon Deity.
‘It may be recalled that the Celtic word “Glas” which prefixes “cu” to
give the name Glasgow, means a soft, yet bright grey colour. It thus
fairly well describes the mellow glow of the moon, so different from the
blinding glare of the sun.
‘The Moon God, Clot, gave his name to the river, the Clota or Clyde,
because the stream at Glasgow made a magnificent sweep in its course, imitative
of the new moon.
‘A ridge at Glasgow, described as Drummothar in 1682 and 1785, may be
Druim-mo-dir, “the ridge of the Moon Deity.” Of like genesis may be one of the
oldest streets in Glasgow, the Dry-gait and the Pol-drait close to it.
Bal-der-nock, close to Glasgow, seems to enshrine the same meaning.'
And now for social planning Neolithic-style, according to Mann.
‘The Neolithic philosopher and astronomer laid out the
Glasgow area on a plan similar to that of a clock-face and like a gigantic
spider’s web, but rigorously geometrical.And now for social planning Neolithic-style, according to Mann.
‘A picture of the heavens was sketched by means of earthworks over large
areas suitably situated like the area whereon Glasgow is now placed. Photostat
copies of the Garth surrounding Glasgow Cathedral, on a large scale, have
recently been published to demonstrate the astronomical lay-out of the kernel
of the area of Glasgow.’
And more than that.
A photo taken by Mann of the stone looks like graffiti of a not-too sophisticated
type; linear spirals, circles with dots at their centres, wavy lines, all in
white on a rough stone background. The Cochno
Stone was a Bronze Age stone first documented in 1887 by Reverend James Harvey,
John Bruce, and William Donnelly. It has over one hundred carved indentation on
its surface and is considered to be one of the finest sets of petroglyphs in
Scotland. In 1937 Mann decided to paint the markings in order to make them more
legible and the site became a tourist attraction.
Mann's picture is
in black and white but when he painted the stone he had used yellow,
blue and red. The popularity of the stone led to its partial destruction – or
desecration. Names, initials, dates and the usual array of graffiti were
scratched onto its surface until the Ancient Monuments Board decided to protect
it in 1965 – by burying it.
According to Kenny Brophy;
‘Mann took an interest in
the esoteric patterns he saw on this rock – spirals, weird symbols, crosses,
and stars. In order for visitors to better appreciate the stone in 1937 Mann
painted the symbols… Overlain on the prehistoric markings was a measured and
complex grid system of his own devising which helped him interpret the code.
Mann was by now obsessed with the mathematical and astronomical properties of
such symbols and it is almost certain many of the shapes he painted on the
stone were fantasies of his own construction. He began to find what he wanted
to find.’
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| The Mann himself (right) and the Cochno Stone. |
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