Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Cecil Mitchell

MANX HERITAGE FOUNDATION ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT

‘TIME TO REMEMBER’

Interviewee(s): Mr Cecil Mitchell

Date of birth:

Place of birth: Scotland

Interviewer(s): Rosemary Walters

Recorded by: Rosemary Walters

Date recorded: 13th December 1996

Topic(s): Attending Sheffield University Moving to the Buying Silverdale Glen and mill Water-driven roundabout Making ice-cream Buying derelict farm Tourists and Sunday School outings WWII and being called up Manx Electric Railway Government purchasing Silverdale The Wakes week Living next to Silverdale Glen Isle of Man Steam Boats Decline in tourism Nobles Baths and Summerland Head amusements

Cecil Mitchell - Mr M Rosemary Walters - RW

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Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Cecil Mitchell

RW It’s Rosemary Walters here. It’s Friday 13th December 1996 and I’m just going up to Silverburn to interview Mr Mitchell ... I am now sitting with Mr Cecil Mitchell in the lounge of his home, Silverdale, overlooking the beautiful Silverburn Glen. Mr Mitchell, you were born on the Isle of Man were you?

Mr M No, I was actually born in Scotland. My father was working up there and we came back to our home territory, South Yorkshire, when I was four years old. So although I was born in Scotland there is no Scottish ancestry, except my father’s mother came from Shetland, but she refused to be counted as Scottish. If anybody said she was Scottish, she said, ‘I’m nae Scotch, I’m Shetland.’

RW So there was an Island tradition.

Mr M An Island tradition – nothing to do with Scotland. A strange thing that.

RW And when did you actually come to live on the Isle of Man?

Mr M Well, when I was ten years old I came as a border to King William’s College and I was there for eight years. I came in 1915, just after the start of the first war. There was no visiting me – we only had three small boats running and of course it was the wartime and Knockaloe camp had started. The only people travelling on boats were the aliens backwards and forwards, when they were changing camps, but that’s how I got to know the Island and the ships. Then after I left, my home town was Sheffield, I got a diploma in Civil Engineering at Sheffield University and then I was with a firm of consultant engineers in London for a couple of years, but most of their contracts were ... there were government grants and some fellow came down, an inspector from the government, and said, ‘That man is unqualified, he’s only got a diploma. He should have a degree and you mustn’t allow him to do any work which is funded by the government.’ So as it happened I was one of the tail-end of a family trust – we had a family coal mine, and it was the Mitchell Trust and I was one of the tail-end ones, so I was self-supported, so I didn’t mind. Actually it was going to work out cheaper not to work, because I was getting paid £2 a week and I was paying out £2.2s just for my board and lodging. So in a way I didn’t mind. Oh, the Institute of Civil Engineering said, ‘We don’t recognise your school certificate.’ It’s a strange thing, I got maths and additional maths and science, but I had only got a pass in English, not a credit, so they wouldn’t accept that and they said, ‘Oh well, unless you can take ... you know, in the May 2

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you have also the matric or try to get it, but you will have to do it before you are 25.’ I pointed out then, I said, ‘I’ve only got two months to go until I’m 25. There is no chance. If I couldn’t get the ... English now after about seven years, I couldn’t take it anyway, the exam season is over.’ So I was shut off – I couldn’t get into the Civil Engineering Institute. Anyway, it was a case of I could’ve settled anywhere I wanted in the world. I had two happy years down the south coast. The best part were the steamers going from Dover to Boulogne or Dover – Calais about twice a month, going for day trips, I still got ships, but anyway I decided the best was the Isle of Man because there were ships going in all directions, a bigger fleet, and I moved over in 1930. At that time the only electricity was Douglas Corporation, so my mother insisted, she said, ‘It’s got to be somewhere where there is electric.’ She didn’t want to go back to gas so that is why I settled in Douglas. In 1938 I saw a notice that Silverdale was up for auction. During that period I would quite often drive out and call in at Silverdale. I knew it very well and I came down to the auction and there were quite a few people there representing the railway, Abbey, someone else and someone else, but the bidding was very slow and Harry Johnson who knew it would be a good opportunity, he suddenly says, ‘It’s yours.’ And I found out why afterwards because it was about falling to bits. Anyway I found it very interesting having to rebuild every building.

RW Would you be willing to ...

Mr M Well, I had to rebuild ... the section at the back where the kitchen is and below that, I had to build that on because it was only a wooden structure.

RW Could we just actually say what it was you bought when you bought Silverdale complex? Had it been a working mill at that time?

Mr M Oh yes, I got the mill thrown in.

RW The Silverburn was the main stream?

Mr M The Silverburn was the stream yes, the mill was going, just with the waterwheel and the stones crushing.

RW And what was it they did at the mill? Was it a corn mill or ...?

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Mr M Well, originally it was corn and flour, but it had been very badly neglected and so in the end, I think it was only more or less crushing oats for cattle feed because it wasn’t really fit enough for human consumption of flour. It used to be, but all the machinery had got bunged up, you couldn’t clean it or anything.

RW So it wasn’t a working mill?

Mr M Yes, it was working. We kept it working, but just for the farmers.

RW And was it a local beauty spot that was visited by people at that time?

Mr M Yes, oh yes. I think Silverdale started when the railway came south in 1970 something and people were coming out from Douglas and they would walk up the glen and the Douglas Sunday schools, looking for picnics and things, they would have their annual picnics and there would be a crowd would come on different days ... and this would be happening in the late ‘90s, perhaps about then.

RW In the 1890s?

Mr M About 1880 rather, or something, just before the turn of the century and I think it just had a marquee up and part of the mill complex was a threshing mill, worked by the waterpower. So that meant the farmers had to bring their sheaves into the mill to be threshed and take them away again, but at the turn of the century we had a lot of mill contractors, with the traction engines and the mill, that went round the farms and they threshed on the farms. So the owner of the place was Tom Quine and his sister Margaret. Originally the Quines came down from Glen Helen in the of the 1880s, some would say about 1880 they came down. They were at the Glen Helen mill when they came down. That was William Quine that I believe was an MHK, but it was his son and his daughter carried it all on, the tradition.

RW You bought it then at auction in 1938 and what was your impression of what you would be able to do with it? You said you had an engineering background. Were you interested ...?

Mr M Yes, well, I was interested in more or less repairing it and getting it restored. Another thing, the toilet block, that was only galvanised, that was done, and we 4

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got a proper sewage system ... two tanks and a spreader and a filter bed built down according to the board. I had to bring the electric up and the water up over a quarter of a mile each. I enjoyed all that, to just build it up.

RW And when did you first get an idea about doing anything like a boating lake or making it into an attraction for visitors?

Mr M That must have started in history, long ago.

RW So there was already a boating lake there?

Mr M Oh yes. Well, I know it from 1915 and there were boats then and strangely enough in the summer he used to just open the shop and the cafe part. I don’t know from the rationing what ... they could supply, but it was opened because they were living alongside it, so they opened up the door to anyone that came. But he had the old rowing boats there and I believe in 1911 he bought a small waterwheel from the mines which he fixed up to the roundabout. So it’s the only water-driven roundabout, I think, in all the country.

RW So the actual roundabout in the sort of fairground area was driven by water?

Mr M It’s still going.

RW Is it really?!

Mr M Oh yes, the Forestry Board, they have had to repair it a lot. There were a lot of times since ... things on the wheel, but the framework, the steelwork, of the wheel is still ... that’s what he got from Foxdale in 1911. Oh yes, so when I bought it, it was only sitting there. The summer crowds and picnics were coming up.

RW But it was also just before the outbreak of the Second World War, wasn’t it? In the first few years that you owned it, were there many visitors to the Island?

Mr M Well, it was shut down for six years. I was away for five with the Manx Regiment and when I came back the mice and the rats and the ivy had more or less taken over everything. I tried to tidy up, but I managed to get open for the Whitsuntide, like a year after VE day. 5

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RW So was that 1946?

Mr M Whitsuntide, 1946, we managed to open and just keep going and at that time we used to make our own ice-cream.

RW How did you do that?

Mr M It was an electric machine. Before that you used to have to phone up to Douglas for a block of ice, go down to the station with a handcart, bring back the block of ice and chip it up and put it in and Maggie Quine would make a mixture of custard powder, or something, and you would put it in and then you had to stir it by hand to freeze it up and after about an hour you would have about a gallon of ice-cream.

RW And very hard work.

Mr M Yes, we could do it a lot better when we got the electric freezer and everything then. And I was going to say, we had just got everything in order when the war started and then it was an uphill game getting going again because the rationing was on. You had to count every cup of tea. Every hot beverage you were supposed to count.

RW Can you remember what you charged people in those days for an ice-cream or a cup of tea? Can you remember what it cost?

Mr M I think a cone of ice-cream would be about three pence and a wafer was sixpence. That was about it and the boats were about sixpence a head.

RW And was that for half an hour or an hour?

Mr M It was about a half hours, I think. That was like after the war. I am a bit hazy about just before the war because I was living in Douglas then. I were only coming down and my brother-in-law – he wanted to get away from the seas before the war started. I didn’t realise that like, but he was sort of managing it for me while I was in Douglas. Also he said we should try to get control of the road down so there was a derelict farm at the end and that was going cheap and, you know, he urged me to buy up the farm so we could have the road. In the end it didn’t make much difference because a dispute with other neighbours and 6

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things, nobody really knew who owned the road, so it didn’t make any difference, but I got lumbered with a farm, and old farm. The only thing was to make the house habitable for a start because it only had a cold water tap and then when the cafe shut down my brother-in-law, oh yes, he was keen on farming so when we had to register at the beginning of the war and it came round to me and I said, ‘What do I put down?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Mr Cooper’s put down as mill manager and farm steward.’ At that time we had only got three grindstones worked by waterpower ... and we had eighteen sheep and he was farm steward but it looked alright on paper. I was put down as proprietor, Silverdale Pleasure Grounds. I was two years younger so when we had to register, I automatically was in the net. He got exempted because he’d got two nice titles, but he had to work hard during the war. He wanted to stay home and that was the only thing about it, he stayed home, because farming was controlled by the government. Knockaloe said what you had to grow and I had a very good friend, the late Finlo Corkill, who arranged to look after my stock, any buying of stock. He was an MHK later, were Finlo, and my accountant in Douglas, yes, he realised he had to keep a check on things, so things were ... oh, I got married at the beginning of the war. Of course she was really in control of the finance ... and between the accountant and he was checking up on things, all she had to do – she hadn’t any responsibility much, but it was a case Percy couldn’t do anything on his own. He wanted to stay home and he stayed home and as soon as he was 42, at the end of the war, he said, ‘As soon as you are back, I’m going.’

RW And he left you to look after the farm and everything?

Mr M Yes, he left me with the farm and a cafe, which I didn’t ... well, I never thought I would have been tied up having to run them and I ran the farm ‘til 1960. That would be about sixteen years, wouldn’t it? I had to come back in ’46 to ’60 ...

RW About 15 years.

Mr M Yes, I was out running the farm.

RW And was that part of any of the attraction for the visitors? Did they look at the farm?

Mr M Well, we used to advertise our dairy farm, our own ice-cream made from our 7

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own cows.

RW Wonderful, so you used the cream from the cows to make your ice-cream?

Mr M Yes, well that was the start, but I found out though, after a few years, that it was going to be a lot cheaper and easier to buy from Manx Ices. Manx Ices had got started. They were a bit reluctant to come up here because they thought it was a dead-end, but they got a very big surprise when they found what was being sold.

RW And were you selling an enormous amount of ice-cream here then?

Mr M Yes, they were very pleased. They brought down ... I had to hire a conserver from them and at the end of the first year they told me, ‘It’s alright, we won’t charge you anything for the use of it,’ because of the quantity that was going through.

RW Can you remember at all the numbers of visitors that came at that time then?

Mr M Well, of course they had admission tickets, people had to pay to come in, but of course I have no idea really of the numbers. The biggest of course were the Sunday school picnics. There would be a big crowd would come down, but in the end I think we probably lost out because we had to get extra staff and they wanted a lot of food and they didn’t want to pay very much, the Sunday schools. So they wanted a very cheap tea and yet they wanted a lot for it.

RW So some of your visitors would be tourists to the Island and some were local people and Sunday school outings and so on.

Mr M We had about five ... well, at that time, I don’t know whether it was about seventy coaches, a lot of coaches, but at that time there were about five drivers who would come here doing a mystery tour, a short tour, they would come out and we would get about thirty people who would come with them. Our best afternoon was Sunday afternoon because then people would bring tea and brought children. But anyway the history started, as I say, from when the steam trains were bringing people down, the local people, and then more visitors. It was a bit of a problem because they had to pass Rushen Abbey first and they probably went in the Abbey and didn’t go any further.

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RW So you needed to attract them further up the glen.

Mr M Yes, yes, but people got to know it really because we used to get regular ones every year, some of them coming over, their families coming over, and then of course we had all the local families coming. People would come out from Douglas. There weren’t many cars in that time though. There were only a few people that were able to get out with cars.

RW What was the main form of transport for people, say, living in Douglas then? How would they get down here?

Mr M Well, they’d usually come on the train.

RW Yes, and get off at .

Mr M Yes, come out on the train for the day.

RW And did you close in the winter then or were you open all the year?

Mr M Oh yes, we closed at the end of the Manx Grand Prix. We used to open at Easter weekend and then close down and then be open from Whitsuntide ‘til the end of the Manx Grand Prix. Well now, as regards the mill there, just before ... and got my call-up date – was about six months. It was strange at that time, Colonel McClelland with the Manx Regiment it was ... and he sent word that he wanted about a hundred reinforcements and it took a long time, while they were ... every so often they would tell him an alleged group was going off, but there was the navy and the air force, they were more or less getting some of the civilian groups, they were having them, and also there was an army ... he was representing the army and he’d sort them out and if there were any with special qualifications, he was nabbing them for the army. So it took a long time. All the colonel’s gang waited for his hundred and he was getting all the thrown-outs that neither the army, the navy, or the air force didn’t want.

RW Dad’s Army. (laughter)

Mr M A lot of them were mostly just off the farms and things, unqualified, yes, but it took a long time. Anyway, it was lucky so we got extra time, but there was only a fortnight’s notice. You couldn’t plan anything long. Anyway, I got an electric 9

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boat and hammer mill in the mill and, the stones it would get through one second, that’s one and a half hundred weight of corn, a stone, in an hour. With the electric mill you could get six sacks of corn through in the hour, so six times as much in the hour. So we didn’t use the stones and they were lying and the way they were they had to be cased-in to keep the grain from going all over, to be trapped to come down the chute, but when lying idle they were only a resting place for the rats and everything, so one of the first things, when I came back, I said to the builder, ‘Well, how about taking these stones out and putting the floor in and we could have more floor space and he took the stones away and ...’ to think about thirty years after that the Chairman of the Forestry Board ... ‘Oh, it is Millennium Year coming on,’ Mrs Quayle’s chairman then, and she said, ‘wouldn’t it be a nice idea if some people could come in the mill and see all the stones.’ I said, ‘They’re not there. They’ve been gone over thirty years.’ She was chairman of the board and she didn’t even know what was inside the mill. ‘Where are they?’ I said, ‘They’re broken up and they are underneath Mylchreest’s petrol pumps, by the airport.’

RW But as in the pleasure ground, some of the tables are made out of the stones.

Mr M Oh yes, well now, those stones they were just on wooden legs so I got the builder to put up a concrete plinth and the pattern that is round it was from one of the screens, the old screens. That’s why it’s a knobbly thing. They’re still lasting well, those stone tables.

RW And in the pleasure grounds themselves then, there was the roundabout which was driven by water.

Mr M Yes, I had to get a lot of new boards and things into the waterwheel and the horses always needed repairing.

RW They’re beautiful the horses, with the carved wooden horse, aren’t they?

Mr M Oh yes, of course, the Forestry Board do them up nice now. We used to try to keep things going, but it was a bit of a problem because wheat we were getting from the admission fees didn’t really cover all the repairs and upkeep. I had one man, he was the miller and in summer he was the boatman and in between he would be doing maintenance and things.

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RW So people would come and have their picnics here or they would use the cafe, and there was the boating lake and the pleasure ground.

Mr M The busiest years would be, I should think, about the first ten years after the war. People were still coming out on the trains in groups and then they dropped and dropped. They got more coaches with people just going once round the Island non-stop, but it was about the first ten years and then numbers began to drop somehow. They were steady though. The Forestry board they ... this is a bit complicated because the Manx Electric Railway went broke and the government took it over and they found they’d got about half a dozen glens that were owned by the Manx Electric, so they didn’t want them and shoved them onto the Forestry Board and the Forestry Board evidently, when they did up Glen, put swings and things in. So one of our regular family customers came on a Sunday and said, ‘Oh, we’ve been going to Laxey Glen. It’s free there. They’ve got swings and everything.’ So I got onto the ... on the Board to see if they were interested in buying the thing. They came down and had a look, no, no, no, they weren’t interested. Well, about two years later they went and did Glen Helen up, put up more swings, and strangely enough soon after that the Speaker of the House of Keys, he used to come up looking for his grandchildren and he would just wander right through and say, ‘I’m just picking up my grandchildren.’ Well one quiet morning we thought, well he’s been three quarters of an hour picking them up, I’ll just have a chat with him and I explained, I said, ‘Well, the Board have done Laxey up and Glen Helen. They are all free, but I am struggling on and I’ve got to charge people to come in.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, do they mind paying to come in?’ So I thought – this is very tricky – I said, ‘When did you last pay to come in, sir?’ because he’d just come to pick them up, you see, you couldn’t really charge him. He said, ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Well the next morning I got a telephone call to say the Chairman of the Forestry Board, the Secretary and the architect were coming down to ... for the sale of the grounds, they didn’t want the cafe though, and the chairman was very puzzled when he came down, he said, ‘We’ve been down a couple of years ago. We sent our report in ... we didn’t really want it and suddenly got told to come down to negotiate a sale and the money would be available.’ So I had to think quick of a quick number because it was the last chance of getting anything. Anyway...

RW Was this in the late ‘50s?

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Mr M They ran the outside for about three years ...

RW What sort of year are we talking about? Are we in the ‘50s?

Mr M Yes, this would be about 1958.

End of side 1

RW ... now about the government suddenly becoming interested after your conversation with the ... was it the Chief Minister?

Mr M The government took over all the outside, but they wouldn’t take the boats so I still needed to keep them and hire a boatman in the summer. At that time there were a few farm sales taking place, there was one down at Billown went and seemed to go for a fairly good price so I thought I would try the market. The biggest offer that came was from Wilfred Cain of Ballahott. He had about 150 acres and he was quite willing to take my 50, that put him in the 200 class, and he was able to work it with the same men and machinery because it was all adjoining, his fields, they all adjoined. So I got rid of the farm. The last job was getting the potatoes up in 1960, to getting the spud crop up, so ... then we ran it ... after another year with just running the cafe and all, even the boatman realised that it was a losing job. We were working ... my wife and I, we were working for nothing, and he realises anybody came in – he was getting his winter wages ‘cos ... oh, by that time the Electric Board had wired up a lot of the farms so they were able to have their own little crushers and various things. So the mill trade was going down and down and down. At one time we had about fifty customers on our list, spread all around the parish as far out as ... two were out around Mount Murray and some were over at and Ballafesson. So the area spread from Mount Murray to Ballafesson, so fifty assorted farmers would come.

RW And then they became independent of you.

Mr M But anyway we decided ... and the next time I said to the Board, during the ... ‘It’s no use carrying on there because it’s not worth it to you, but it’s there all day long and at the end of the year there is nothing left for us. They could put it up for sale.’ I said it. At that time we were above a knitting works. I said, ‘Somebody might like to take a big building over as a knitting works.’ Oh, that 12

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wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do, no. So in the end they thought it over and decided they would like to buy the cafe after all and make that up.

RW It’s interesting because, from what you are saying, you can see the changing pattern of activity and industry on the Island. What were the greatest years for visitors here, for you then, in the time that you owned it from the end of the ‘30s through to the ‘60s?

Mr M Well, I should say the first year before the war.

RW Yes, that was the busiest and where did most of the visitors come from that came to the Isle of Man at that time?

Mr M They were Lancashire.

RW Lancashire, but was there a special week that they came?

Mr M Yes, each town had its own wakes. One of them was the last Saturday, I think, in June and then it went on, each town.

RW And they had different weeks?

Mr M Each town had their own week. Wakes week they called it.

RW But it went on from June right through to ...?

Mr M Right through to the beginning of August, I think. Well then, by August the school holidays and we just got assorted, you know, people coming over on general holiday. Before that it was just a case a town would shut down and we’ll all go to the Isle of Man. The other place was either Scarborough or Llandudno, I think.

RW And so the busiest time for visitors really was just before the Second World War and then through the ‘50s you noticed a decline really when it was harder for you, as a proprietor, to keep the place running and to keep everything up to scratch. Mr M Yes, the whole sort of pattern of the tourists had gone. People didn’t like walking – they weren’t used to walking up from the station. Now, as regards the 13

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building itself, the development, after Quines when he made the old threshing mill room into a tea room, just before the first war, he decided to put the big room with the windows up. He got that up the year before the first war and of course he realised that the big picnics were coming down and the tents and things weren’t very good, they were leaking and things, so he made a good job of that. The only thing was he was using a lot of old railway lines for the girders and they were rusting up. The Forestry Board have had to nearly rebuild that place since then. Since I sold out, there have been I’m not sure if it’s eight or nine different tenants from the Board have had ... and nobody stays very long. So I feel quite happy that I got rid of it when I did. Nobody’s made a fortune on it.

RW And you stayed here, living next to it and enjoying all the beauty of the glen?

Mr M Yes, I chose this spot because – well, the trees have grown up – I could see down to the mill yard, any supplies coming in, I could also see from the other window, when we shut at night, if anybody was taking a boat out when they shouldn’t, I could go down, and the other way, this was the farm load coming up, it was a case it was handy for putting the cows ... open a gate and put in the cows and they would walk down on their own to the farm. So this was built in a strategic spot really for everything. The kitchen was the biggest size in case we needed ... well you needed about a dozen men when they’re threshing and there was always the possibility if the cowman who lived in the farm, if he had left, somebody else had come, they might not want to upset the house to have a dozen men for a meal. They’d have to come up here. So that’s why the kitchen is big. This is the spot I chose and we took a long time before we could get the permit to get the house built because ... building materials were rationed, but I’ve been quite satisfied with how it was done and there have been no alterations at all, except for the coke boiler was gave out when we went onto oil. Nothing else has changed. I must say I had a lot of help all those years from Corrin’s the builders in Castletown. Harry Corrin was very good because he could talk over things. He would advise me if something was not worth doing. He was very honest, he’d say, ‘No, it’s not worth doing that.’ And he was a very good adviser.

RW You’ve told me you were born in 1905 and so you are now 96 years old and you look absolutely wonderful.

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Mr M 91, yes, that’s right.

RW I beg your pardon, 91, and you walk every day round the glen and down to the village.

Mr M Well, I’ve been down to the village, to the Post Office, pension day. Anyway, I get my bread and milk. I’ve been down there for the paper. I’ve been down this morning.

RW Now I want to ask you the secret elixir because I know that years ago there was a mineral spring that came up here in the glen and I am wondering whether your amazing energy and youthful appearance is in any way connected to the water here in Silverdale?

Mr M Well, it just happened that when I took over I had to bring the pipes up, it was coming off from Barrule ... Barrule, the side of the shoulder road above ...

RW Up by the Cringle?

Mr M Up by Solomon’s Corner, around there, yes, and then of course they’ve got the Cringle Dam doing there, but I can mention also about the ... originally you would see what they called a pop works. It says, ‘Silverburn Mineral Water Works.’ Well, he closed down at the beginning of the first war and he had three sons, they were all in the army and one was killed and the old man, he more or less just packed up making the mineral and it sort of fizzled out. Just after the beginning of the second war ... oh he used it in the meantime, the old man and his daughter used it as a market garden and one of the sons would help at times, but when the old man died in 1940 the family offered me would I buy the building and what was the garden. It is laid out as a big lawn now, a big square, where people play football. That was the market garden. So that was added on ... bought it. I thought, well, it’s going, I may as well take it and it came as a useful place for storing the boats and things, a boathouse.

RW So you didn’t actually carry on bottling the natural water?

Mr M Oh no, it had all been closed down by the time I got it. From 1914 to 1938, that’s fourteen years, it had been closed fourteen years. There used to be another firm in Castletown, Dodd’s the grocers, they used to do mineral waters. 15

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Everybody, there were small firms, and then it just got bigger and then the big ones took over.

RW I understand that’s why the brewery was sited in Castletown as well because there was a spring of fresh water coming up there.

Mr M Oh yes, that’s what they say. People just thought it was sea water from the harbour. There is supposed to be a bit of a spring there. I don’t know where it came from.

RW And one of your other great interests, I know, is travelling on the boats and obviously, over the years then that you’ve lived here on the Isle of Man you’ll have seen an enormous change in terms of the boats and the people that travel on them. Could you describe for me some of your earliest boat journeys at different times of the year and what sort of numbers of boats came to the Isle of Man?

Mr M I could tell you beginning ... during the first war there were three small ships, The Tynwald, The Douglas, and The Fenella. They were only small ships. The Tynwald would take just over four hours calm, five hours on a rough day. The Douglas took five hours on a calm day, six hours on a rough day.

RW Was that sailing to Liverpool?

Mr M Just to Liverpool, yes, and then there was The Fenella, but I’ve got to say I had a lucky escape if we had to get her because she was about, getting on for seven hours – a very slow boat. She was mostly on the cargo and then of course when we came back from the war we got ... some of the ones came back, some had been lost in the first war. I’ve been on about 35 different ships altogether, but during the war time, those that were sailing, there was The Douglas and Tynwald, they were only small. I’ll show you the pictures of them, Mrs Walters.

RW This is The Tynwald we are looking at now. It’s got two funnels ...

Mr M You can see how it was open – there was no shelter area at all.

RW ... completely open and the decks look crowded with people, but it’s not a big vessel compared to the ones that they use today. 16

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Mr M No, and then this was The Douglas.

RW The Douglas, that’s got a central funnel and two masts, one at either end.

Mr M Those were the two that kept the service going during the ... and when they were off The Fenella had to take over but, I mean to say, luckily, to some extent, otherwise they would have missed all the trains.

RW And they were of course steam ships then, weren’t they, as well?

Mr M Oh yes, they were steam, yes. You can see how open they used to get there on the top deck.

RW Not much protection from wind or weather.

Mr M Yes, our home was Sheffield and I know I came home one time and when I got home my mother was surprised because all the colour out of my braces, the leather, had gone through and soaked into my shirt. I was soaked with the spray. But nobody in my day expected to be ...

RW It was part of the fun I expect, wasn’t it. It was an adventure.

Mr M Yes, but, as I say, those were the early ones, then the boats got bigger and bigger.

RW And through the post war years then, in the early ‘50s, were there many boats going back and forth linking the Island to different places?

Mr M Well, they had on average about twelve ships, but some of them would only be out for about two months in the year. They weren’t all out at once. Some of the oldest ones, they’d just find a scratch crew and just run them up and down and then it gradually ... but the thing was everybody wanted to go away Saturday morning and come on Saturday morning and that’s why they provided a big fleet and during the week some of the boats would just be tied up in the harbour doing nothing and they had a very strange fare structure because the fares at the weekend were cheaper than during the week. That was the old days, how it worked, because it was a big tradition on the railway, I think, cheap excursions for Saturdays and so they kept that on and they wonder why everybody went on 17

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the Saturday. So I think in the end they evened it out a bit and then they got it reversed and of course then it was going to be cheaper in the middle of the week and so that spread things out a bit. People that could choose their time would come in the middle of the week, so it eased the pressure a bit.

RW That’s good business then, isn’t it, to encourage people to come when you’re not so busy, yes?

Mr M I’m not quite sure when ... everything seemed to fizzle out at once. Well, I think where things went wrong when The Palace Company sold out to these Americans to build a casino at The Palace. Now I think everything went wrong then.

RW Do you mean for the Island?

Mr M For the Island, yes. For a start the casino was going to allow people to be boozing till five in the morning. Here we would never get a quiet night. There would be stray ones coming back through here before dawn who’d be coming from the casino up to some places. They were coming back way to Port Erin so they didn’t go through Castletown and pass the Castletown Police Station, I think. They pulled all the ... The Palace, there was the big, huge ballroom and The Coliseum, the theatre. The Palace Show was always a good show and then with regards The Villa Marina, it’s just got more or less cheap entertainment its getting nowadays. In the old days there was Noah Moore was the manager in between the wars, he was very strict and had very good artists in. They used to get ... Count John McCormack, the singer, Fritz Kreisler with his violin – they were all more or less world famous people. He’d get them over for special concerts and things, yes, but things have changed. That made a difference there. The numbers started falling, I should think, round about 1960. Everything was wrong for about fifteen years, then fifteen years after the war it began gradually going down because people were able to go abroad to Spain and places. For the first few years after the war there was a currency control. You could, I think, only take £10 out of the country, or something like that, so they had to spend their holidays in Britain, but once the currency was relaxed they began to find their way gradually, there were more and more going away.

RW And the Isle of Man declined really from that time?

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Mr M Yes, we used to get huge crowds down from Scotland. There used to be a Scotch week. Terrific crowds and something about five boats would go up to Scotland to bring them down.

RW And Ireland – did we get many visitors then from Ireland as well?

Mr M Well, for the Scotland one, they had their Highland Games – were in the Nunnery in those days.

RW They actually had highland games here on the Isle of Man?

Mr M They took the highland games here, yes. They came down to have them in the Nunnery grounds there and there were huge crowds with everybody walking, coming up through the South Quay and away up to the lake in the Nunnery grounds. They would go past the house and there is a huge, big field further on. That was a big event was the Scotch week. Yes, and they used to get Belfast and Dublin, there used to be about three sailings a week from each. Oh, and it was Belfast of course, their big day was July 12th, when King Billy crossed the Boyne – that’s their day. Excursions would come. Usually one was a Catholic group would come, charter the boat and come to the pier and they used to walk right along the Promenade up to the grotto, there’s a grotto at the foot of Summerhill, and as a pilgrimage they would walk right all along, right up to there.

RW They have all the stations of the cross, don’t they, up there?

Mr M Yes, and they would walk up to the grotto and back again. That was where, you know, things like that don’t happen at all now. And of course the boats used to call at Ramsey, but less and less people called in there. Ramsey Commissioners went ... there was a field that could be used for camping and it was also the showground, they went and decided to put houses on it, so the show got ... the Royal Show used to be on the turn at Douglas and Ramsey, it got shoved out to Sulby and of course Douglas Corporation, they did rebuild so they couldn’t have a show in Douglas, so the Royal Show is always up at Sulby now, because both Ramsey and Douglas did away with the showground. There used to be army camps too. The Territorials would come over and there would be a boat- load of soldiers come to Ramsey, but Ramsey – once the campsites went, they used to get all the Boys’ Brigades from Belfast come, but it was getting a bit ... 19

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well they soon discovered that ... there if a scout group come and if you got off at Ramsey you had to wait and carry your bags and stuff all the way along Ramsey Pier and find a lorry to take them out to the campsite. They discovered you could have a ... not have the lorry come down to Douglas and they would stay on the boat till it got to Douglas, unload their stuff from the boat into the lorry with all their kitbags and sit on top of it and drive up to Ramsey to the camp. And they were back in the camp just the same time as if they got ... because there was no double handling of their kits and tents and things. They had already brought their tents – were all put on the wagon and the last sailing ... oh, Ramsey jetty was getting pretty poor and the last sailing was free in 1971. I went down. It was The Manxman and supposed to be going at half past eight and he said, ‘Owing to the weather,’ it was an on-shore wind, ‘we will be delayed. We will be waiting for the Ramsey passengers who were coming down.’ The Ramsey passengers came in two taxis!

RW That was all?!

Mr M That was supposed to be the last sailing from Belfast and I think there were eight people.

RW After lorry-loads, down to a couple of taxis.

Mr M Yes, so people would come down by taxi if they wanted on the boat. Nobody wanted to get off at Ramsey and the Scotch people weren’t really ... it was more the Belfast ones liked the camping. There were a few got off from Scotland, but they wanted to come to Douglas, that suited them. It actually fizzled out. The last sailing, eight people would have gone on the last ... I thought Ramsey people would have all decided, well let’s have a day out, you know, as a token celebration to say what we can do.

RW On the last sailing of Manxman, but they didn’t, no.

Mr M Nobody wanted to, no.

RW You mentioned earlier that The Palace Hotel had opened a casino and it seemed to herald a great period of change in the nature of holidaymakers.

Mr M Well, you see, when the Corporation, in their co-called wisdom – the Noble’s 20

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baths, they were in Victoria Street ... they were getting a bit old, but people didn’t mind. Quite a lot of people used them although they perhaps weren’t ... if they wanted them they were quite happy with them because they’d always been going there – decided they wanted a new baths house and built this wonderful Summerland. Faraday ... he was, had gone, ‘Ah, everybody will have to get on a horse tram to get out there.’ Now they didn’t mind building baths buildings, instead of building it in the middle of town, build it way out there so they took over The Derby Castle. Well, The Derby Castle also had a huge dance hall and also a variety theatre. So suddenly The Derby Castle went and The Palace went. They lost the two ballrooms and two theatres went so when visitors came, ‘Well, where is there? What is there?’

RW Yes, ‘What is there to do?’

Mr M What they did at Summerland was nothing like what the crowds would get at Derby Castle. It was nicknamed ‘The Hall by the Sea,’ in the old days and at one time Florrie Ford used to be singing, ‘Kelly from the Isle of Man’ there and that’s when they used to get the crowds, who would go to there. Then another thing, Onchan Head began ... I’m just trying to think now, say, about 1960 and I heard someone say, ‘Oh well, the gypsies are coming out from Onchan Head.’ They used to be the gypsy families and things coming and running the stalls and that year they said ... ‘The gypsies have all pulled out from Onchan Head. They’re not coming back!’ Onchan Head was full of stalls. There was the figure eight, there were the river caves, you could go round the river caves, a proper fairground, there would be crowds walking up there.

RW Yes, when would that’ve been? As late as the ‘50s or would it have been into the ‘60s?

Mr M Well, it was really at its best between the wars. Of course it was very neglected, it shut down in the war and it was pretty ...

RW Did it stay there permanently or did they leave at the end of the summer, or did they live on the Island?

Mr M Well, I think some of them moved over – they would come for the summer. There were two families were ... over, the Harts and the Boswells. There was this cafe, or restaurant, out there on the King Edward Road, it used to called, 21

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Cafe Royal, run by a Hart family, but it’s been changed to all kinds of names now. It’s more or less the same building, but they came kind of patching it up. It’s more or less before you get to The Majestic, it’s on the left hand side of the King Edward Road.

RW The one that’s still a restaurant?

Mr M Yes, a restaurant. I don’t know what they call it.

RW Well, at one time it was The Sizzler with Mr ... and then it was Boncomptes.

Mr M Well, originally it was the Cafe Royal and it was run by the Harts and they were gypsies and they also had stalls up on Douglas Head. Now that’s another thing that vanished. The crowds used to go across. There used to be two steam ferries going across, people walking ...

RW Across the bay?

Mr M Across the bay, yes, and ... they never really got going after the war because the electric trams had shut down, to Port Soderick. At one time you could buy a ticket for about 1/6d and you could go on the ferry boat, up the cliff railway to Douglas head, tram to Port Soderick and then the cliff railway down and the return thing was about 1/6d. So you got a ferry each way, up and down the lifts and the tram ride there and back and the crowds would be coming there, but the war came, things got neglected and they couldn’t open the tramways again. The bridges were 1920s be very, very busy. That was pioneered by the Forrester family and they took a good interest. What a very surprise it was. This would be in the 1920s. From the College we were allowed out ... oh yes, it was a special half-term and we were allowed out for a day and some of us went to Port Soderick, half a dozen of us, and we were wondering about something to eat, this was February, and it must have been Mr Forrester, he said, ‘Oh, about what time would you like it? About an hour and a half’s time?’ he says, ‘I’ll help you out and you can have roast lamb.’ Where he produced the roast lamb up out at Port Soderick in those days, when there was no fridge. I don’t know whether he went and killed a lamb especially or what. It’s more of a puzzle ever since! All these rules ... END OF INTERVIEW

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