A Tour of Onchan
Straight down the middle.

The Manx Arms Hotel

The first public house on this site was owned by Thomas Cubbon blacksmith who purchased two adjoining plots of land on the Ballachurry farmland in 1803 and 1807 and here he erected a house, smithy and farm buildings.

The earliest reference to the public house was in a trade directory of 1824. In 1838 he announced in the local press that he had erected a new superior furnace for the heating of cartwheel hoops.

When Okell bought it the pub was three windows wide with a central projecting porch of masonry with slate roof hidden behind a parapet wall. The walls were plain rendered and the building looked nothing like it does today.

Mr Okell is believed to have used R.F. Douglas the local builder to alter the premises which included extending it towards Governors Road, installing that unusual eaves feature curving outwards, the two storey bay window and the oak porch that made its way to Greenfields.

The hotel underwent considerable alteration in 1939 following plans approved by the commissioners in October 1938. To the designs of Wilfred T. Quayle, architect of Douglas, (who had also served his articles with Jos. E. Teare) a cottage and toilet block to the left of the hotel were demolished and a new single storey bar building was erected in rustic brick to match the Isle of Man Bank.

The interior of the old hotel was also altered to provide a new layout and further alterations took place to the kitchen and other areas. Externally unusual shaped windows were added to the right hand gable to compliment the new extension on the other side. On the front elevation the porches and ground floor bay window were removed as part of a revised scheme submitted in November 1939.

Avondale Road

For many years the name of the road was known as Smithy Road after the smithy immediately behind the Manx Arms Hotel. It was a lot narrower than at present and was no more than a country lane until Sam Skillicorn built the two terraces of houses on the right hand side in the period 1913 to 1919 (all building operations were suspended during the First World War which delayed their completion).

These were built on the lower part of the Nursery Gardens which was sold off by the Spittall family for development. In 1914 Mr Thornton ran the Nursery Hotel and he wrote to the commissioners suggesting the name Avondale Road which was the name of his guesthouse on Queens Promenade in Douglas, this they accepted.

St Catherines House and Terrace

Just behind the Manx Arms is to be found a house called St Catherines which was the name of the parish church prior to St Peter’s.

Behind the house is a garage converted from an old cottage which stood on the narrow plot before the house. The plot of land was orignally bought in 1806 and the cottage was sold in February 1832 by Thomas and Ann Braid to John Quane of Douglas for £60.

This house was of course completed at the same time that St Peters’s was finished and the old church was demolished. The 1869 Ordnance Survey shows the garden layout and refers to the presence of “sculptured stones”.

The land alongside the house and stretching across to Victoria Avenue was purchased by Robert Skillicorn who built St Catherine’s Terrace and Mount View Terrace between 1899 and 1901.

On to the The Manx Co-op