A repository of images related to the life and work of Ludovic Mann, periodically updated.

Mannginalia 09: Another Mann Iron Age site, this time a rather muddy crannog excavation at Lochend Loch, North Lanarkshire, where Mann stepped / slipped in to help rescue excavate this monument in 1932. The story of the discovery, excavation, and eventual reconstruction of this monument can be found on the urban prehistorian blog. I’m not sure if Mann is in this photo – maybe the figure in the middle? (Source: still chasing this up, the image was passed to me by Jim Mearns.)

Mannginalia 08: Ludovic Mann pictured with a logboat that emerged from industrial sludge near Kilbirnie. This feature article in Colville’s Magazine was written by LMM himself, entitled Glengarnock in Ancient Days. The author was introduced in glowing terms, perhaps in a paragraph written by the author himself, as was his wont, and it notes: he ‘is also widely known in insurance circles’. (Source: clipping thanks to Neil Wilkin, Colville’s Magazine May 1930.)

Mannginalia 07: A letter from Mann to the Chief Inspector of Monuments in England, dated 27th March 1922, requesting an up-to-date plan of Stonehenge. (Source: Martyn Barber)

Mannginalia 06: An envelope from Ludovic Mann’s insurance broker office that contains the typescript mann-uscript (ha! ) for a text about Pictish symbols. Date unknown. (From the Applebey loft collection.)

Mannginalia 05: Newspaper cutting from The Bulletin 16th June 1938. A short piece about ‘Scotland’s most enthusiastic digger’and recent publication of Mann’s book Earliest Glasgow. Notable for a pic of Ludovic that makes him look like ‘the great beast’ Aleister Crowley. (Source: George Applebey cuttings collection.)

Mannginalia 04: ‘A complex problem in Euclid’. A cutting from The Sketch August 1926, showing two examples of Mann’s chalk grids on megaliths. On the left, the Auld Wives Lift, Craigmaddie Moor. On the right, Stonehenge, which Mann visited with his chalk that summer in a semi-official guise (Image and info provided by Hugo Anderson-Whymark.)

Mannginalia 03: An original sketch, by Mann, of the arrangement of the Druid Temple, Clydebank. Bears an uncanny resemblance to the grid painted onto the Cochno Stone in 1937 (source: Clydebank Local History Museum archive)

Mannginalia 02: ‘Where druids star-gazed’. Cup-and-ring mark uncovered at Cathcart Golf Course, Glasgow. The hand belongs to a golf course employee (source: George Applebey collection / Bulletin 10-11-37)

Mannginalia 01: Mann’s drawing of one of the Bronze Age Food Vessels discovered in Knappers, Clydebank. His observation, that the patterning on the side resembles ‘cereal ears’ is a nice one and may well have an element of truth (source: Mann 1939 The Druid Temple explained).