One of the most remarkable episodes in British archaeology was played out in the summer of 1937 in Clydebank, near Glasgow. For a short while, the Druid Temple, or Knappers, was the hottest ticket in town and prehistory was sexy, thanks to the charismatic Ludovic MacLellan Mann. This site, long invisible, and in the shadow of Clydebank tower blocks, is one of my favourites.
Over the years, thanks to the kindness of various folk, I have come to own a modest amount of what might be termed Ludovic Mann archive material. This is all in the process of being catalogued and written up, and in due course will be donated to one of his more established archives. These are held by HES in Edinburgh, and Glasgow Life. Some of this pertains to the Knappers excavations, and in this blog post I would like to share some of this material, and contextualise it.
This site was excavated in advance of sand and gravel quarrying from 1933 until 1939, initially under the direction of JM Davidson. Excavations were in 1937 taken on by eccentric Glasgow archaeologist and antiquary, Ludovic Mann. I have blogged about him many times before, to the extent he has his own category! In that summer, he promoted this site so effectively that by all accounts thousands visited the excavations, and he gave talks on site and in the evenings. The site also became transformed with curious replications of mounds and stake structures, although it would be fair to say that what he thought he found, and the reality, were not the same thing. It was, however, clearly a significant Neolithic and Bronze Age site with burials. You can read more about the results of excavations at this site in Graham Ritchie and Helen Adamson’s later account (1983) and find out more about Mann’s antics in Ritchie’s biography of Mann (2003).
There are additional references and links at the end of this post for you to follow up on the Knappers story and Mann himself. And to contextualise this somewhat, you may want to watch a lecture I gave back in 2018 where I considered what Ludovic Mann was up to in Clydebank in 1937! Knappers was only one of the eccentric things he got up to….
In this post I want to look at two categories of material that I have copies of, both of which were part of his campaign of publicity and fund-raising. These are a series of pamphlets or booklets, and postcards. I will also mentioned newspaper articles briefly, but this will be the subject of a more in-depth piece of writing to come in the future.
Booklets
Mann was a great self-publicist, and as well as his public appearances and experimental reconstructions at the site itself, he also produced a series of pamphlets that were, in effect, attempts to get publicity for the site, and try to raise money to purchase the site ‘for the nation’. He never did achieve the latter aspiration but there is no doubt that his pamphlets did much to promote what he called the Druid (or Druids) Temple, bringing visitors to the site, and putting into print some of his theories to explain the site. These were also illustrated with plans and artefact photos, and so are immensely useful documents.
There were three booklets and I have copies of all of these (multiple copies in some cases)! All were in effect self-published by Mann.
An appeal to the nation is the earliest of these booklets, and this is very much about raising funds to the extent that each copy included a donations slip and envelope for the “DRUIDS” TEMPLE, near GLASGOW RESTORATION FUND APPEAL.
NB 166 Buchanan Street is between Queen Street Station and Dundas Lane, and until recently played host to Forbidden Planet.
The short pamphlet (15 pages) includes a brief summary of the key results of the excavations to date, and extracts from newspaper pieces about the excavations (The Times 15th September 1937 and The Glasgow Herald 28th July 1937). There are two fold-out diagrams which document fanciful cosmological interpretations for the site.
The urgency of this fund raising is made clear on the title page and throughout the pamphlet. At the end, there is some sense of what the money will be used for: “to continue the exploration work and to reconstruct the temple and restore the prehistoric setting, which fortunately has not yet been interfered with by modern buildings. Thereafter the site will, it is hoped, be handed over to the perpetual control and for the delectation of posterity to a special body composed of representatives of learned Societies and local Councils and Trusts”.
Finally, and tantalisingly, Mann ends: Large scale diagrams for Schools, Exhibitions and Lectures may be obtained. I guess something like this?
An appeal came out in autumn 1937 I presume, and was probably closely followed by a second booklet, or rather he re-named the original and gave it a grey cover.
The “Druids'” Temple near Glasgow had gained an apostrophe since the first version, but in fact, upon opening, it becomes clear that this is basically the same as the ‘Appeal’ booklet but less obviously about the money. No donation slip was contained in this version.
This early, and very brief, text was subsequently supplemented by a longer booklet that had multiple editions, the version in my collection dated to 1939.
The Druid Temple Explained has a title that suggests that things have moved on, and the potential recognised by Mann in earlier writings had by now come to fruition, and he had a better handle on what had been found. However there is still an appeal in the front inside cover for donations to be sent to Eric Ferguson.
The text consists of a series of short essays on Knappers themes: the significance of prehistoric monuments in general; discovery and excavation of the site; description of results and small finds; what they mean; and some broader contextualisation. Mann’s obsessions with eclipses and prehistoric measurements come to the fore.
The success of earlier publicity of the site is suggested by Mann’s remarkable claim that ‘some 40,000 people visited the place in 1938’ (page 5), with no figures given for the clearly very busy 1937 season.
Notably this booklet contains black and white plates of artefacts found during the excavations, notably a ‘polished flint chisel’ (actually an adze) and a fish-shaped ‘stone axe blade’, plus two views of a complete pot. Three of these images were also used as postcards (see below). A site plan was also included, and a wonderful drawing of a Food Vessel pot. This was drawn by Mann himself, and contains an insightful observation about the decoration looking like ‘cereal berries and ears’; as I have said before, this was very much ahead of its time.
This latter booklet was very kindly posted to me in 2017 after a public lecture I gave about Mann’s work at the Cochno Stone – Miss Fleming (who also spoke to me after the lecture) told me this booklet was handed to her father personally by Mann when he visited Knappers in 1939. Shivers down the spine time!
Postcards
Amongst the stuff I have in my modest Mann archive is a small white envelope containing four postcards. I have to confess I can’t remember where I got this from, but all four have images from the Knappers excavations, and I would imagine were sold on site to raise funds.
The envelope has written on it: COCHNO?? DRUID TEMPLE PHOTOS. 18 AUGUST 2018. ‘DOING A WEE TIDY’ suggesting these were found items in someone’s house or study. [If you gave these to me, please do let me know!]
Three of the postcards show objects found during the excavations, and each has a short descriptor on the back too, stuck rather than printed onto the card. Each of these items was also pictured in the 1939 The Druid Temple Explained booklet although in sepia-colour, not the black and white of that publication. One postcard shows three items, the others one each (only the fish-shaped ‘flint chisel’, far left, did not get its own postcard, or at least I don’t have this).
Two of these objects were illustrated in Ritchie and Adamson’s 1983 reconsideration of Knappers.
The ‘Knappers Pot’ is a fine item, and an incredibly rare example of a complete Neolithic pottery bowl. For scale, it is 10cm high.
Bowl, complete but broken and badly repaired so that the irregularity of its form has been
exaggerated. The fabric is hard, mainly black shading in places to buff with a semi-burnished slip outside; the surfaces are uneven and in places are broken by quite large protruding grits; tool marks remain on the upper surface of the rim, on the internal surface, and in places forming a groove below the rim outside. No section of the fabric is visible. One perforation has been made from the outside (Audrey Henshall in Ritchie & Adamson 1983, 184).
We would now call this pot a Carinated Bowl (not Western tradition or Grimston-Lyle as in the past) and it belongs to the fourth millennium cal BC, being the earliest form of pottery in Britain. The perforation suggests it may have been hung or had some kind of lid. There are only a couple of other complete examples known from Scotland, notably a fine bowl found in the ditch of a Neolithic hill top enclosure at Dun Knock, Perth and Kinross.
This object, Mann’s flint chisel, is in fact part of a late Neolithic adze, described by JB Kenworthy in great detail. Assigned to the Duggleby type, this was likely a digging tool that would have been hafted with a wooden handle. He adds, ‘it may be considered as being socially prestigious rather than of ‘everyday’ significance’ (in Adamson & Ritchie 1983, 189).
The fourth postcard was different, showing a view of the site in its entirety. This was probably taken in 1937. There is no label or writing on the back of this postcard, but it does have written on the front in shaky white capitals (Mann’s own hand?), “DRUID” TEMPLE, CLYDEBANK.
This image can also be found on Trove, as part of the digital archive for this site (link) and I have included their copyright statement below the postcard although the postcard I have was not courtesy of HES. This striking image shows in spectacular detail just how elaborate the reconstruction and replica elements of this site were. Bear in mind this was in the middle of a sand quarry so all of the earthworks and stakes are speculative additions to the site by Mann and his team. This represents a hugely eccentric visitor attraction, but probably does not bear much similarity to what this place would have looked like in prehistory.
Final words
The booklets and postcards offer an amazing insight into what was essentially a very short window into the life of Knappers aka the Druid Temple (with or without plural, with or without apostrophe). They show that extensive efforts were being made to market the excavations as a visitor attraction, primarily to raise funds, through the sale of postcards and pamphlets. This was to fund excavations but also promote the long term survival of the site as a visitor attraction. In other words, an early example of heritage crowdfunding. This was supported by marketing materials such as the map and flyer below, and the magnetic presence of Mann himself on site holding forth.
Another important element to the story of the promotion of this site was newspaper coverage. Mann used the media extensively to promote his work and even report on excavation results, and his work at Knappers resulted in a blizzard of newspaper coverage.
This short extract, from the Edinburgh Evening News 28th July 1938, contains a typical Mann inspired clickbait headline. I have come into possession for research purposes a scrapbook compiled by Mann’s assistant, George Applebey, of scores of newspaper and magazine clippings that follow the Knappers excavations from 16th July through to 16th August 1938. I am currently working on a paper that pulls together the information from this treasure trove, which shed light on the excavation process and the marketing of this site, so watch this space for more Mann archive richness!
The value of such material cannot be downplayed. As well as offering insight into archaeological discoveries and informing interpretations of these, documents such as news clippings, photos, notebooks, leaflets and pamphlets help to explore the context within which discoveries were made. This can also tell us something about society at the time, the personalities involved, and cast light on the archaeological process. This kind of thing has become an increasingly important and exciting area of my research in the last few years, working on archives of the likes of Mann, Ronald Morris, Alexander Thom and Harry Bell. So there is more where this came from!
Sources and acknowledgements: none of this could have happened without the kindness of others who have shared materials with me, or passed them into my care, for which I am hugely grateful. The Applebey scrapbook was given to me by George Applebey’s son, also George. The Druid Temple Explained booklet was posted to me by a Miss Fleming, and the “Druids'” Temple near Glasgow booklet came from the personal collection of Margaret & Louis MacInally. None of this is taken for granted, and all materials will be passed to an appropriate repository at the conclusion of my research, with appropriate acknowledgements.
Thanks to staff at the HES search room, and Katinka Dalglish at Glasgow Life, for access to their Mann collections.
Further reading: both PSAS papers can easily be found online.
Ritchie, J. N. G. and H. Adamson (1982), ‘Knappers, Dunbartonshire: a reassessment’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 111: 172–204.
Ritchie, J. N. G. (2003), ‘Ludovic McLellan Mann (1869–1955): ‘the eminent archaeologist’’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 132: 43–64.
Finally, the Duggleby adze image comes from: Mortimer, J.R. 1905. Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire. London: Brown.
For more on this amazing site, see: Gibson, A. 2011. Report on the excavation at Duggleby Howe causewayed enclosure…. Archaeological Journal. 168, 1-63.
the urban prehistorian 
