Tour of Onchan 1
Straight down the middle.
Governors Road
The original route to Onchan from Douglas was along the sands, up Summer Hill (formerly Burnt Mill Hill) through the village, down The Butt and out to the ford at Groudle along what is known as The Pack Horse Road.
Governors Road a hundred years ago was known to the locals as “the back road”. The first development along it was in late Victorian times when terraced houses appear. We shall look at some of the buildings as we work our way towards the centre of the village.
Nos 3 – 17 Governors Road
These typical 1930s semi-detached houses were built by local builder Stanley Quilliam whose builder father resided in Queens Road for many years. The houses were designed by Lomas and Barratt architects of Douglas and built by Stanley between 1934 and 1935. Stanley Quilliam also built similar houses behind in Sea View Road.
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Stanley Quilliam's semis not long after they were built. Since then a monkey puzzle tree has grown up in the garden of the furthest house near to John Cowley's workshop. |
The Hague
This house was designed and built in 1934 by L.L. Corkill who trained as an architect, qualifying as a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Architects but then he became a builder, initially in partnership with Mr Cowell as successors to R.F. Douglas but then by himself.
He was one of the original promoters of recycling; the sandstone gate pillars had previously stood at Laureston on Ballaquayle Road Douglas but originally came from the entrance to the yard of monumental mason T.H. Royston on Peel Road where there were in fact three of them.
The coping to the wall is made from granite setts that were between the tramlines of the cable car in Douglas which closed in 1929. The facing bricks on the lower part of the house were brand new and cost 3½d each at the time. Inside a fine beam over an inglenook fireplace once supported part of a building in that vast group of buildings in the ‘bus station’ area of Douglas that were demolished in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The Hague designed and built by L.L. Corkill for himself and family |
Other timber used as panelling came from a naval ship and this is recorded on a small plaque in the hall. Mr Corkill designed and built all but three of the houses on this side of the road stretching as far as the copse of trees alongside Coutts Bank. The ones he didn’t design were No 2A which is a Cregeen and Kelly prefabricated bungalow designed by Kay and Gill of Douglas in 1965; No 12 which was built in 1965 in a gap that had been left originally for a road into the field behind, this was designed by Kay and Gill for Stanley Quilliam who built the bungalow for his retirement; No 24 was designed in 1933 by Jos. E. Teare with faint echoes of the arts and crafts movement. |
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