This garage building to the rear of Parliament Square (recorded in the Island's register as standing behind the former "Clarksons" premises at 1 Parliament Square) was entered on the Protected Buildings Register in 1984. No further documented history was found beyond the bare registration record.
Historic sheading and judicial district on the eastern side of the Isle of Man.
Garff was one of the six traditional sheadings into which the Island was divided for administrative and judicial purposes. Before 1796 it included Onchan as well as Lonan and Maughold. The Common Law Courts Act of that year altered the boundaries: Lonan and Maughold were constituted the Sheading of Garff, while Onchan was transferred into Middle.
The sheading had its own Coroner. Daniel Quark, examined by the Commissioners of Inquiry in October 1791, described the office as annual and carrying a salary of £3 sterling. In civil matters the Coroner summoned juries, served and levied processes issued by the Governor, Deemster, Water-Bailiff and High-Bailiff, and summoned juries of inquiry in trespass cases.
The Coroner also served the first process in Common Law actions, executed search warrants in criminal matters and apprehended offenders. Once each year he gave notice to the master of every herring boat in his district to attend the Custom House and pay the herring duty.
Garff’s Common Law Court was held at Douglas. The 1791 constitutional evidence described the Sheading Courts as meeting twice each year, generally in May and October. Glanfaba, Michael and Ayre were heard at Peel; Garff at Douglas; and Middle and Rushen at Castletown. Juries dealt with land titles, debts and other civil actions, while the Great Inquest presented nuisances.
This gatekeeper's hut stands beside a level crossing on the Isle of Man Steam Railway's line between Castletown and Port St Mary, which opened as part of the route to Port Erin in 1874. It originally housed the crossing keeper responsible for manually operating the level-crossing gates; automatic barriers were introduced in 2002, after which the gates were removed and the hut fell out of everyday use, though it has continued to provide storage for the railway outside the operating season. The hut sits beside what is now a converted gatekeeper's cottage offering holiday accommodation near Port St Mary railway station.
British Mediterranean fortress which appears alongside the Isle of Man in eighteenth-century military expenditure.
After Revestment, troops stationed on Mann formed part of the wider British military establishment. Parliamentary supply accounts repeatedly grouped soldiers serving on the Island with forces stationed at Gibraltar, Minorca and other overseas garrisons.
For 1766 Parliament provided money for the difference in pay between the British and Irish establishments of two corps of light dragoons and six regiments of foot serving in the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Minorca and the newly ceded islands.
The same pattern continued. The supply accounts for 1767 again list six regiments of foot serving in Mann, Gibraltar, Minorca and the ceded islands; similar provision appears for 1768. For 1769 the vote covered five regiments and four companies of foot in the same group of stations.
These entries do not indicate that individual regiments necessarily moved directly between Gibraltar and Mann. They show instead that the Manx garrison, after the Crown acquired the Island, was being accounted for within the same imperial military system as Britain's Mediterranean and overseas fortresses.
Ginger Hall, at about 20.3 miles, is a climbing left-hander named for the Ginger Hall Hotel that stands beside it - itself named after the ginger beer once brewed and served there. It remains a popular spectator vantage point with parking and refreshments on the road towards Kerrowmoar, and the road here was among those widened ahead of the 1954 TT.
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, situated on the River Clyde. It had trading connections with the Isle of Man, particularly in the tobacco trade that shifted from Whitehaven to Glasgow during the eighteenth century, and was part of the wider network of Irish Sea ports with which the Island maintained commercial links.
One Manx family came from Glasgow into the Island's history. Richard Betham, appointed Collector of Customs at Douglas on the Revestment and the first English customs officer to take charge of the Manx customs, had his children baptised there before he came over: the parish record of his second daughter Elizabeth is entered at Glasgow under 7 March 1754. That daughter married Captain William Bligh at Kirk Onchan on 4 February 1781.
Glen Helen carries the course through a sweeping left-hander and then uphill towards Sarah's Cottage and Creg Willey's Hill, around the 9.6 to 9.9-mile mark. It holds a somber distinction in TT history: the course's first-ever fatality occurred near here when Victor Surridge crashed heavily and died during practice for the 1911 TT, the race's inaugural year on the Mountain Course.
Glen Rushen is the long valley that runs from Cronk yn Irree Lhaa to the sea at Glen Maye in the parish of Patrick. W. Walter Gill, describing it in A Manx Scrapbook in 1929, found that its reaches carried different names. From Glen Maye to the bend at Ballacottier it was Glion Mooar, the Big Glen, as on the Ordnance map, and the next section was the authentic Glion Rushen, the Brushwood Glen. Above that came Glion y Can, then Glion ny Brack, the Glen of the Trout, and above Dalby Bridge Glion ny Ghoayr, the Glen of the Goat, which begins in the marshy ground called Chibbyr Pooyl Sallagh, the Muddy-pool Well. Gill also recorded an old saying that Glion Rushen ny Sleityn, Glion Reeagh Rushen and Glion Rushen ny Cheayn were the three Glen Rushens of the Isle of Man, the Glen Rushen of the mountains, the sportive Glen Rushen and the Glen Rushen of the sea. He could not tell whether the saying meant three different glens or the three natural sections of this one, since only one Glen Rushen was then known.
Glen Vine is another small residential village the course threads through, roughly 3.9 miles into the lap, on the run towards Crosby. As with Union Mills, it is a plain village name rather than a point with its own TT story.
Glencrutchery Road is the A2 slip road out of Governor's Bridge Dip, sitting at about 265 feet of elevation around the 37.5-mile mark. It climbs slightly to roughly 285 feet before descending toward the TT Grandstand, home to the course's start and finish line.
Glentramman is a medium-speed left-hand bend between Glen Duff and Churchtown, on the run down towards Ramsey. It is noted as having been the scene of a number of racing incidents over the years, though no single named crash or rider is specifically recorded here.
Glyn Moar House, with its outbuildings and grounds, stands on Glen Mooar Road near St John's and appears on the Isle of Man's Registered Buildings list. No further verifiable history of the house was found online beyond confirmation of this listing.
Gob-ny-Geay is a right-hand jink on a fast downhill straight at the 35th Milestone, roughly midway between Creg-ny-Baa and Brandish Corner, around the 34.9-mile point of the course. It has historically been used as a speed-trap location during racing, and the name appears in several spelling variants in different sources, including Gob-y-Geay and Gob-na-Geay.
This red sandstone memorial cross on Douglas Head stands 28 feet tall, with a shaft and runic cross weighing some 9 tons set on a 40-ton limestone base, and bears the inscription "The Great War, 1914." It was gifted by John Leigh Goldie-Taubman of the Nunnery and unveiled on 11 November 1922 by the Lieutenant-Governor, sited on Douglas Head because the headland was traditionally the last piece of Manx soil seen by islanders leaving by sea. The original cross was blown down and shattered in a gale on 11 October 1928, after which a smaller, simpler cross was erected in its place using the surviving original panels, one commemorating "the chivalry of the men of this Island and all who died for us."
The Gooseneck, at about 26 miles, is a climbing right-hand corner and one of the most popular spectator vantage points on the whole course, since fans can stand very close to the racing line. It has also seen tragedy: fatal accidents occurred here in both 1955 and 1994, coming into and out of the corner. Road widening between the Gooseneck and the 26th Milestone was carried out ahead of the 1939 TT.
Government House, set in around 12 hectares of lawn, garden and woodland on Governor's Road, is the official residence and workplace of the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man. It originated as Bemahague Farm, built between about 1820 and 1830, and its name blends Norse and Gaelic elements that may point to a settlement predating the Norse arrival on the Island in the ninth century. It became the Lieutenant Governor's official residence in 1863, was purchased by the Manx Government and extended in 1904, and has been owned by Tynwald since 1903; it was added to the Protected Buildings Register on 2 May 2018.
Governor's Bridge and Governor's Dip form a hard right-hand hairpin with a road junction on Old Bemahague Road, around the 37.3-mile mark, where the road drops sharply into the Dip before a left turn and a right-hand exit onto a historic slip road. The bridge, and the corner's name, come from a stream it spans; overhead tree cover limits sun and air circulation here, so the surface is often damp and slippery.
Stone shelter built 1955 by public subscription, between the 30th and 31st milestones. In memory of Les Graham, 1949 500cc World Champion, killed in the 1953 Senior TT. Used as a marshalling/medical point during race week.
Great Britain is the island comprising England, Scotland, and Wales, and the political entity whose government drove the Revestment of 1765. The relationship between Great Britain and the Isle of Man is defined by the Island's status as a Crown Dependency, neither part of the United Kingdom nor a colony, but possessing its own parliament, laws, and traditions.
The purchase was made in the currency of the new state. The contract of 7 March 1765 provided for seventy thousand pounds of lawful money of Great Britain to be paid into the Bank of England, free and clear of all taxes, impositions, fees and other deductions, whereupon the Island should vest unalienably in the Crown.
The constitutional question has never been finally settled. Sir James Gell as Attorney-General had to answer an opinion of the English Law Officers that the Insular Legislature could not legislate on a matter touching Crown rights without an Act of the Imperial Parliament, and he answered it from the precedents of insular legislation. A modern constitutional writer, arguing that Manx emancipation still falls short of independence, holds that the sovereign takes the Island not by descent from the Norse kings but as heir of Henry IV of England, and that the subordinate lordships of the Percys, Stanleys and Murrays are beside the point. That is one view among several and the argument continues.
The wider Laxey mining valley beyond the Great Wheel itself, encompassing the Welsh, Dumbell's and Engine shafts, the ore-dressing Washing Floors, and the mine buildings that once employed hundreds. Mining began around 1782 and the complex became one of the richest lead, zinc, silver and copper workings in the British Isles before closing in 1929.
Great Meadow has one of the most extensive recorded accident histories of any named corner on the Billown Circuit. Wikipedia's article on the circuit lists fatalities there in 1973 (Mike Pepper) and 1988 (Steve Taylor), and then three in a single year, 1996 (Graham Hayne, Michael Craig, and Dave Pinkerton), underscoring its reputation as one of the course's most demanding sections.
Greeba Bridge, about 6.3 miles into the lap, carries a Scandinavian-derived name: 'Greeba' is thought to come from Old Norse 'gnipa', meaning a peak, reflecting the island's Norse heritage. The crossing was previously known as Cronk Dhoo and sits amid open farmland on the A1.
Victorian Gothic residence, built 1849. Home of novelist Hall Caine from 1896 until his death in 1931; he wrote much of The Manxman there. Cross-check against the existing Hall Caine Person item - his grave is at Maughold, not here.
Greystones Cottage stands on Main Road, Kirk Michael, and is registered as a cottage. No verifiable history beyond this could be found online for this specific property.
The Groudle Glen Hotel was built by R.M. Broadbent, the farmer who owned Bibaloe Beg Farm and who saw an opportunity when an electric tramway was planned along Banks Howe to link Douglas with a proposed satellite town. Broadbent developed the wooded valley below his farm as the 'Fern Glen of the Isle of Man', planting the trees still seen today and creating a sea-lion pool at the cove, and the hotel opened for business in September 1893 to coincide with the new electric railway's arrival. Over the winter of 1895-96 he went on to lay the track for the narrow-gauge Groudle Glen Railway, which still runs past the hotel today. It is registered as a former public house.