A Tour of Onchan 2
Round The Edges.

Belgravia Road

The first houses to be built here were the red Ruabon brick houses on the left-hand side. These were erected by Frank Forrest whilst he was developing the houses in Imperial Terrace.

He named the roadway Forrest Park Road. They were not built as a continuous terrace, he bought the plot for two in October 1898, then another in January 1899 and again in April 1899. Four were complete by September 1899 and six by October 1900.

The taller houses on the right were built by Alex Gill as he progressed Royal Avenue West. He started work in 1912 but stopped in 1915 as all building works had to cease during the First World War. This left two houses only partially built at the top end of the terrace. When the war finished he in fact pulled these houses down rather than complete them as the joist ends had rotted, timber was hard to come by and arrival numbers were beginning to decline.

Larger Image Alex Gill’s Belgravia Road guesthouses have flat roofs set behind a mansard roof of red diamond shaped asbestos tiles. As with Royal Avenue West each doorway had a canopy. The first house in the terrace is double fronted whereas the majority of houses are only single fronted.

It was Alex Gill who had the road renamed Belgravia Road after the area of the same name in London. The remainder of the houses were built: Nos 15 –17 built for Mr Walter Chorlton 1938 – 39 to the designs of R.H. Cain; No 19 designed by Davidson and Marsh for E.M. Watterson in March 1949; No 21 built 1950 –51 to the designs of T.H. Kennaugh for H. Carter; No 23 was built for Mr E. Stubbs in 1973 to the designs of Kay and Gill; T.H. Kennaugh had his plans for Mr J. Taylor approved in December 1938 and No 24 was built in 1939; No 25 was started in January 1963 and completed by October; the recently married Mr & Mrs Arnold Callin engaged T.H. Kennaugh to design their house which was complete by October 1950; No 28 was designed by the Castletown based architect F.H. Kerr (pronounced Carr) for Mr J. Taylor in 1947 and it was complete by February 1949.

At the top end of the road on the right Alex Gill erected a wooden pavilion in 1911 - 12 and all his tenants in the area became members of the Royal Avenue Social Club.

Here there was the opportunity for recreation and social events including a bowling green and tennis courts. The complex was sold in October 1947 and became “Taylor’s” where, in addition to table tennis and snooker inside the pavilion, tennis and putting were available on grassed areas outside and conveniences were added internally in 1948.

The Royal Avenue Social Club then built new premises called Pennington Hall in the corner of Onchan Park which provided facilities for snooker, dancing, whist drives etc. It later became a television repair works and currently serves as a depôt for the commissioners’ parks department.

Royal Avenue West

Here is another area developed by Alex Gill but what the reader might not know is that he had already built the houses in Palace Terrace on Douglas Promenade and was at the same time building up the “drives” leading off Central Promenade.

He was Onchan born and trained as a mason with his father. He borrowed the money to build the houses but when they were erected he let them rather than selling them, using the rent to cover the loan charges. At the time of his death in 1919 he owned 164 properties.

Royal Avenue West houses appear to have been started in 1904 after Gill purchased the site in September that year for £2060 they were built in groups on a serpentine route overlooking the natural ravine below. The first nine houses were occupied in 1905 and the last group of six at the top end in 1912. The houses were identical in their appearance but lost is the pointed slender glass canopy that each one had over the door. The largest of these purpose built boarding houses was the first, for many years known as “Stead’s” after the proprietor. It appeared to be three houses in width but because of the angle of the properties was really two and a half widths tapering backwards.

Larger Image The houses of Royal Avenue West with the roughness of The Lhergy (Port Jack Glen) showing in the foreground.

In 2002 this property was demolished and a new block of apartments built on the site being complete in 2003. Although only slightly taller than the existing properties the lower level garage looks like a dungeon with bars on the openings projecting above the boundary wall.

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