A Tour of Onchan
Straight down the middle.

A Cut Above

This building was erected in 1936/37 as two shops with a room above.

It was built on the site of former cottages. During the 1940s the building was used by St Anthony’s Church as a youth club and meeting room.

The Carpet House

This too was part of Walton’s Yard and at the back of the site was a “double cottage”, that is a pair of semi-detached cottages sideways on to the road. In 1956 they were turned into a temporary workshop and garage by the insertion of double doors in lieu of ground floor windows and doors.

Just two years later plans were approved for the demolition of the old building and the erection of a new large commercial garage of plain brick, corrugated asbestos roof and ‘round the corner’ folding doors to the full frontage. The space between the garage and the road became a concreted forecourt.

For many years this was Bill Shimmin’s Garage for motor repairs. In the late 1980s it was taken over by Jacob Miller for car sales. He replaced the wooden boarding in the folding doors with glass so the cars could be seen. In 1994 the building was taken over by The Carpet House who had previously traded in the Onchan Shopping Precinct on the site of the old Nursery Gardens. After a few years they installed a new shop front and carried out some internal alterations as well.

To the rear of this building a workshop was built in 1963 but generally was just used as a store by Bill Shimmin. Eventually the property was brought back into use after some remedial and external facing work was carried out.

Holly Cottage

This is one of the older properties in Onchan and whilst it may look rather strange set in a hollow this wasn’t always the case. The cottage was built to face south at right angles to the road. The ground in front of it gently sloped downwards at a similar angle to the drive beside “A Cut Above”. When the garage was built with a forecourt in front this put the ground floor of Holly Cottage very much in the shade. The cottage with its triangular plot of ground appears on the 1869 Ordnance Survey of Onchan and probably dates from the 1830s.

The Hollies (66 Main Road)

This house appears to have grown up out of the walls of Holly Cottage and indeed it did when Mr Thomas Cowell was the owner of Holly Cottage. In 1904 he built the new house at street level but unbeknown to most passers-by the new half has a basement due to the slope of the ground.

On to Methodist Church and Hall