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A Tour of Onchan 2
Round The Edges.
Onchan University
It may be hard to think of Onchan as a centre of learning but the “Popular University” was run in this part of Onchan during the Second World War.
The houses in Royal Avenue West, Belgravia Road and Imperial Terrace were all requisitioned during the Second World War and became “The Onchan Camp”. There were several academics amongst those incarcerated here and so to relieve the boredom they set up classes for their fellow internees.
Subjects included anthropology, anatomy, electrical engineering, organic chemistry, philosophy, radio engineering and technology. There was also a camp magazine as in other internment camps on the island, produced by using a duplicator yet nevertheless the artists of the camp still managed to produce images on the flimsy paper skin used for duplication.
Royal Avenue West behind the barbed wire. This line drawing is taken from " The Onchan Pioneer" of December 1940 a hand duplicated newsletter produced by the internees for the internees. The drawings were the work of the internees and showed various views of the camp. |
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The newly appointed Vicar of Onchan of 1938 John Duffield, became Camp Chaplain whilst the Roman Catholics had several priests in their number. They all resided in Steads Hotel (1 – 3 Royal Avenue West) which gained a nickname amongst the internees of ‘The Vatican’. Later the Catholics were permitted to march to the nearby St Anthony’s for church services. It was on the strict understanding however that they did not speak with the other parishioners. There was barbed wire all around the camp which had its own football pitch in an area which now forms the corner of Onchan Park but which had previously been the home ground of Onchan Football Club in those pre-war days. |
Port Jack
The beach we refer to as Port Jack shows on the 1869 Ordnance Survey as Port Cooyn; Manx for ‘the narrow port’ and indeed it is hard to visualise today that before road works of 1892–3, Port Jack Glen with its stream opened out onto the beach.
It was the passing of the Howstrake Estate Act in 1892 that changed things. This act provided for the creation of a coastal road and railway and the construction of same involved the cutting of a shelf into the rock face from Derby Castle, the filling in of a beach (Port-e-Vada) where the Manx Electric Railway sheds are now and the building up of part of Port Cooyn which is visible today as a stone embankment opposite the public toilets.
Where the name Port Jack came from seems to be lost in time yet we are only talking about a little over a hundred years ago. Port Jack Glen was known as The Lhergy which is a commonly found Manx name for a slope. When the lower part of the Howstrake Estate was laid out the glen and the brows between the road and the shore were vested in Douglas Corporation as Onchan Village Commissioners had not yet come into being at that time.
Port Jack Glen taken at a time when still in the ownership of Douglas Corporation but leased to Onchan District Commissioners. At the top of the glen in the right hand corner can just be seen the rear of the little bus shelter which stood there until 1960. |
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When Onchan Village Commissioners were in full force they were regularly concerned over the glen as Douglas Corporation were not looking after it and the Commissioners wrote to them on several occasions in an effort to gain control. At first they were granted a lease of the glen and at that time they erected arched entranceways with OVC Port Jack Glen stencil cut into the metalwork. In 1959 they finally managed to purchase the glen and the brows from the boundary at Port Jack to Onchan Harbour from the corporation. A scheme was prepared to restore the swampy jungle in the glen into something more presentable. Shortly afterwards the small 'bus shelter at the top of the glen was demolished and replaced by a building with two shelters facing into the glen and two as 'bus shelters facing the other way. |
In the year 2000 that too was demolished and replaced by one large shelter to serve both purposes and became the Millennium Entrance to the glen.
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