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A Short History of Onchan
The Growth of Onchan up to the
Second World War
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| The village of Kiondroghad remained little changed
for a couple of centuries apart for the old cottages being replaced
by newer ones if they fell into disrepair. There was little in the
way of new buildings and most of the land belonged to the Howstrake,
Ballachrink and Ballchurry Farms which gradually all came into the
ownership of the Bancks family. Their name by the way was spelt in
several different ways over the years.
Slowly the village moved out of the Church Road (known locally as The Butt) and spread a little to the left and to the right. At the junction with the track that led towards the mountains (Avondale Road) a few more cottages appeared in the early 1800s. Also where the road came up from the sands of Douglas Bay in the area we now refer to as Lazy Corner, further sales took place of plots of land for building purposes.
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| We shall not go into detail here as it is proposed to produce a “Tour
of Onchan” elsewhere on this website. A lot of the development
referred to above took place in the first half of the nineteenth
century.
As Onchan approached the twentieth century land was sold off this time for terraces of houses to be built rather than individual houses. Thus Seaview, Sunnyside and Clifton Terraces appeared along Governors Road with Queen Road coming in during the early 1900s. Woodside Terrace comprised 4 houses to the left of Victoria Avenue then there were a mixture of houses leading up to the Manx Arms. In behind, the Skillicorn Family built St Catherines Terrace and Mount View Terrace as well as two terraces in Summerhill Road both called Christian Terrace and further down Strathallan Terrace at the top of Ridgeway Road.
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At the far end of the village we saw Church Avenue and Nursery Avenue going up house by house in the early 1900s with a terrace of brand new shops with living accommodation over being built in between and facing the Main Road.
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| Also at this time, development was taking place in the Port Jack
area as part of the Douglas Bay Estate Company’s promotion
of land sales on the Howstrake Farm. Coupled with this they built
an electric urban railway which later became a coastal railway to
Ramsey and never achieved its goal of connecting with the heart of
Douglas to act as a commuter run.
Here then was a mixture of private houses, terraced houses and guest houses to take the overflow of visitors to Douglas. Imperial Terrace, Belgravia Road, Royal Avenue West, Royal Avenue, Royal Terrace, Royal Drive and Carlton Terrace (79 – 107 Royal Avenue) all existed by the time of the outbreak of the First World War. During the war Falkland Terrace was finished and named after the battle of the Falklands by the developer Alex Gill.
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Further development took place in the 1930s with detached and semi-detached houses in Governors Road which flowed into Sea View Road. Similar houses were built in Sunningdale Drive, Whitebridge Road and Sandringham Drive. Small detached bungalows appeared in Church Road and Groudle Road as well as some more substantial houses along King Edward Road and a few in Summerhill Road.
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