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 Isle of Man 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 Onchan Head amusements Cecil Mitchell - Mr M Rosemary Walters - RW 1 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 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Cecil Mitchell 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, Rushen 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 ...? 3 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Cecil Mitchell 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 middle 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 Manx Heritage Foundation: TIME TO REMEMBER: Cecil Mitchell 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.