Qualla: Ballabeg, Lonan

Ballabeg, Lonan: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Balley Beg, in Manx, simply means the small homestead - and that name turns up on the Isle of Man at least eight times, each time pinned to a slightly different cluster of farms and cottages. This particular Ballabeg sits in the parish of Lonan on the east coast, about three hundred metres from the shore of Laxey Bay, six miles northeast of Douglas and two kilometres south of the village of Laxey. It barely registers as a hamlet - a single farm and a handful of houses - and on the surface there is nothing here to draw a traveller off the A2. The interesting part of Ballabeg is what surfaced when the tram tracks went down through it in 1894.

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Ballabeg, Lonan: What the Railway Found

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the Manx Electric Railway was cut through Ballabeg, the construction crews exposed an ancient Celtic keeill - a small early Christian chapel of the kind found scattered across the Isle of Man - and the burial ground beside it. The keeill was known as Keeill Killane, with var...

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Ballabeg, Lonan: The Schoolhouse That Was Several Things

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A small white cottage still stands in Ballabeg next to where the keeill once stood. It was the schoolhouse - and also the chapel, and also the social cottage where neighbours gathered to play music and tell stories. That sequence of uses describes a particular kind of rural Manx ...

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Ballabeg, Lonan: Laxey Bay, the Long Path

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Step away from the buildings and Ballabeg is mostly landscape. Sheep graze the agricultural fields. Patches of mature woodland and newly planted trees frame the lanes, including a remnant of cliff-side ancient oak forest considered nationally important. Gorse takes the steeper gr...

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