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Spectrum Apartments Central Promenade Douglas Isle Of Man IM2 4JL
Spectrum Apartments is a modern residential development on Central Promenade in Douglas, built as a waterfront apartment complex within walking distance of the town centre and seafront. Estate agent listings describe features such as private allocated parking and a communal atrium garden with a water feature, but no independent heritage source could confirm an exact construction date or architect.
Spooyt Vane Sunday School And Mission Room Ballaleigh Road Kirk Michael Isle Of Man
The Spooyt Vane Sunday School and Mission Room on Ballaleigh Road has uncertain origins, though it is said to have been built around 1860 at the expense of Miss Gore Currie, a niece of Bishop Powys, who is recorded as having personally superintended the Sunday School there for many years; its surviving cast-iron windows hint it may in part be earlier still. The land and building were formally purchased for £100 in 1880 and transferred to trustees for use as a school room, and the hall was enlarged in 1901. Its roof collapsed in 1999, and the building is now in private ownership.
St Adamnan's Church (Lonan Old Church)
St Adamnan's, known as Lonan Old Church and originally Keeill ny-Traie ('the chapel by the shore') in Manx, stands on the east coast between Groudle Glen and Baldrine, its churchyard holding a collection of carved crosses that Manx National Heritage dates to the 7th-10th centuries. Following a 1733 parish petition to Bishop Wilson, a new church was built in 1833 and the old church was left to fall into disrepair; it was restored from 1895 by vicar John Quine on his appointment, and is maintained today by the Friends of St Adamnan's, formed in 1968.
St Andrew's Spire, Finch Road Douglas
This slender spire on Finch Road is the surviving remnant of the original St Andrew's Church, also known as the Scots' Kirk, built around 1832 for Douglas's Presbyterian congregation. When the Presbyterian and Congregational churches united to form the United Reformed Church in the 1970s, the resulting congregation moved to a new church in the north of Douglas beside St Ninian's, and the old Finch Road building became too costly to maintain. Most of the church was subsequently demolished to make way for the St Andrew's House government office block, but its tower and spire were retained, leaving the spire standing today as a freestanding landmark on the site of the former kirk.
St Catherine's Church, Onchan
St Catherine's Church is the parish church of Onchan on the Isle of Man. It contains notable antiquities including a Viking-age runic cross, and has served as the centre of worship and community life for the parish of Onchan since the medieval period.
St Catherines Avondale Road Onchan IM3 1AE
St Catherines, on Avondale Road in Onchan, appears on the Isle of Man's Protected Buildings Register (registered 11 September 1989) as 'St Catherine's, St Catherine's Terrace'. No further verifiable history of the house's construction or occupants was found beyond its registered status.
St Germains Church Vicar & Wardens Derby Road Peel Isle Of Man IM5 1HH
St German's Cathedral, on Derby Road, Peel, was built between 1879 and 1884 to replace the older Church of St Peter in the town's market place, and it was made the cathedral seat of the Diocese of Sodor and Man by Act of Tynwald in 1980. It stands apart from the earlier, ruined cathedral of St German within Peel Castle, which dates back to the twelfth century and was abandoned rather than restored in the eighteenth. The cathedral is dedicated to St German of Man, a Celtic missionary bishop of the fifth century whose feast day is marked on 13 July. It was registered as a protected building on 18 October 2002.
St John's
Village in the central valley of the Isle of Man, beside Tynwald Hill. The Vale of St John's lies close to the centre of the Island, at the meeting of the principal roads between Douglas, Peel, Ramsey and the south. Its history is dominated by Tynwald Hill and the chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist beside it. The annual Tynwald ceremony brought the officers of the Island and representatives of every parish to St John's. Robertson's account of the eighteenth-century ceremony records that each parish sent four horsemen. The clergy processed two by two, followed by the Bishop, Vicars General, Deemsters, sword-bearer, the Lord or his representative, Lieutenant-Governor, Clerk of the Rolls, the twenty-four Keys and the parish captains. The chapel formed part of the same ceremonial landscape. The Manx Society's Records of the Tynwald and Saint John's Chapels preserved accounts of both the old chapels and the nineteenth-century replacement, together with a plan of Tynwald and the new chapel in 1849. Captain Grose's drawings of 1774 showed the earlier arrangement of the site. St John's was also a fair centre. Robertson's list records two fairs there in May, another in July, and two in November. On Tynwald Day the gathering around the hill combined legislative ceremony with the much larger crowd attending the fair. The Duke of Atholl's formal entry into the Island in 1736 was followed by a Tynwald at St John's, where Bishop Thomas Wilson preached before the court. The sermon was preserved with the later records of the chapel and hill.
St John's Mill
A former fulling mill beside the River Neb at St John's, used historically for processing woven wool cloth; a carved date of 1869 marks part of the surviving structure, though the section housing the waterwheel is thought to be older. Restored from dereliction and reopened in 2003, its 12-foot wooden waterwheel, around 200 years old, was itself restored between 2007 and 2009. It now operates as a conference and training venue.
St Lukes Church West Baldwin Douglas IM4 5ET
St Luke's Church stands in the Baldwin Valley near the geographical centre of the Isle of Man, on a site associated with an ancient keeill, and from its hillside position is thought to be the highest standing church on the Island. A short walk uphill from the church lies Killabane, the ancient stone-circle site once linked with early Manx parliamentary gatherings, giving the church a close association with Tynwald's history as well as its own long religious use. Surviving parish register transcripts for St Luke's cover 1836 to 1883.
St Marks Church St. Marks Ballasalla IM9 3AH
St Mark's Church gives the small settlement of St Marks, in Malew parish, its name. It was founded around 1772 as a chapel of ease to serve residents of the outlying, mountainous districts of the parish who lived too far from the parish church at Kirk Malew, and was consecrated by Mark Hildesley, Bishop of Sodor and Man. Local figures Hugh Cosnahan and Thomas Fargher were instrumental in getting the chapel built. The church remains the focal point of the small village that grew up around it.
St Marys Church Bucks Road Douglas Isle Of Man
St Mary of the Isle on Bucks Road is Douglas's Roman Catholic church, built as the town's Catholics outgrew the earlier St Bridget's chapel on the outskirts. Its foundation stone was laid on 28 October 1857 by the Right Reverend Alexander Goss, Bishop of Liverpool, and the church opened in 1859, designed by the noted Victorian ecclesiastical architect Henry Clutton, with later furnishings added in the twentieth century by Giles Gilbert Scott. Together with the Catholic church in Ramsey, it is one of only two registered Catholic church buildings on the Isle of Man, and its construction was seen at the time as a statement of confidence by the island's growing Catholic community.
St Marys The Parade Castletown IM9 1LG
This large house on The Parade began life as St Mary's, a Catholic church built in 1826 by Fr Mather Gahan SJ, funded substantially through donations gathered on visits to Ireland including a major gift from Lady Huntingfield. Its northwest gable famously blew down in a gale in 1829 while still under construction, and the church was re-roofed and had a narthex added in 1889-90. In the 1920s it received carved stations and stained glass by the Dublin artist Harry Clarke, donated under the patronage of Daniel Flynn, Castletown's first Catholic mayor. Declared unsafe by church authorities in 1977, the building was converted to office use and today stands as a substantial period property overlooking Castletown's central square.
St Matthews Church Hall North Quay Douglas IM1 4LB
This hall stands alongside St Matthew's Church on North Quay. The present church, one of the last works of the noted ecclesiastical architect John Loughborough Pearson, was built between 1895 and 1902 in the Early English style to replace an earlier St Matthew's chapel (founded by Bishop Wilson in 1708) that had become inadequate for Douglas's growing population and was demolished in 1898 to allow the Market Square area to be rebuilt. Its halls continue to be used today for meetings by local organisations.
St Maughold Our Lady Star Of The Seas And Queens Promenade Ramsey IM8 1BH
This Roman Catholic church on Queen's Promenade, dedicated to Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and St Maughold, was completed in 1910 to a design by the celebrated English architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and is regarded as one of the finest of his early churches. Building and presbytery cost about £3,000, with the tower separately funded by the Misses Matheson and the bell donated by a Blundellsands benefactor. Poignantly, two of the stonemasons who worked on its construction were among those who drowned when the paddle steamer Ellan Vannin was lost crossing from Ramsey to Liverpool in December 1909, and they are commemorated by a wall plaque inside. It was formally registered as a protected building by the Isle of Man Government in 1985.
St Michael's Church Aka Kirk Michael And All Angels Parish Church Main Road Kirk Michael
St Michael and All Angels, Kirk Michael's parish church, was built in 1835 to a Gothic cruciform design by architect John Welch, commissioned by Bishop Ward, and could originally seat around 650 worshippers with a pew allotted to each quarterland; a planned gallery was never added because of population decline. Its churchyard holds the graves of several Manx bishops, most notably Thomas Wilson, whose grave lies beneath the east window salvaged from the earlier, smaller church that had seated only 300. An ornate lychgate, added in 1907, was built to display the parish's collection of historic runic crosses, and the church's organ dates from the 1840s.
St Ninian's Crossroads
First permanent traffic signals on the Island.
St Patrick's Isle
Small island at the mouth of the River Neb at Peel, enclosed by the walls of Peel Castle. St Patrick's Isle stands immediately off Peel and is now joined to the town by a causeway. Its position at the entrance to the harbour made it both a religious centre and a fortified site. The island became the seat of the cathedral church of St German. An early account states that Bishop Simon, who died in 1247, was buried in St Patrick's Isle in the Church of St German, which he had begun to build. The medieval fortress developed around the cathedral and other ecclesiastical buildings. Later descriptions regarded the castle on St Patrick's Isle as exceptionally strong, one account calling it impregnable except by famine. The island's name carried the tradition of St Patrick's connection with Mann. Medieval and later writers told of Patrick reaching the Island during his missionary journeys, although the surviving textual traditions vary considerably in date and detail. The enclosed site contains the remains of churches, domestic buildings and fortifications from different periods. It continued to serve as a military post and prison after the cathedral had ceased to function as the centre of the diocese.
St Pauls Church Market Place West Ramsey IM8 1JU
St Paul's was designed by Thomas Brine and consecrated in 1822, built to serve Ramsey's rapidly growing population after the town's earlier chapel of ease at Ballure became too small. A west gallery for musicians (clarinet, fiddle and serpent) was added in 1830, ahead of the church's first organ in 1852, and two side wings followed in 1844; a new vestry was built in 1874 and a porch added in 1938. Standing on the south side of Market Place, it is one of the few surviving buildings of Old Ramsey after the town's centre shifted south during redevelopment in the 1960s, and it was registered as one of the Isle of Man's Registered Buildings in 1985.
St Peter's Church Church Road Onchan Isle Of Man IM3 1BF
St Peter's Church, on Church Road in Onchan, was built in 1833 to replace a much smaller seventeenth-century parish church that had become too small and dilapidated for its growing congregation; the new building was designed to seat 500 people. Inside are Celtic and Norse crosses connected to an earlier keeill site, and the churchyard holds the graves of Peter Heywood, a midshipman on the Bounty caught up in the 1789 mutiny, and Lieutenant Edward Reeves RN, who served under Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805. Elizabeth Betham of nearby Bemahague, who married Captain William Bligh, was also married in the church's predecessor building. It was registered as a protected building on 11 September 1989.
St Runius Church Garth Road Crosby Isle Of Man
The Old St Runius Church on Garth Road, Crosby, was the original parish church of Marown and is dedicated to St Runius, or Rónán, the saint from whom the parish takes its name. Part of the present building dates back to the 12th century, and the church was subsequently expanded in 1754. It served as the parish's place of worship until 1859, when a new St Runius church was built at Glen Vine to replace it; the older building was then used as a mortuary chapel and part of its east end was demolished. It was later restored and reopened on 9 August 1959, and continues to be used for services each summer and on major festivals.
St Stephens Church Hall Main Road Sulby Isle Of Man IM7 2HP
St Stephen's Church Hall on Main Road, Sulby, is registered as a church hall serving the village. No further verifiable historical detail about the building itself could be found online.
St Thomas Church Church Road Douglas IM1 2HQ
St Thomas' Church was built in the Victorian early-Gothic style to a design by architect Ewan Christian, with its foundation stone laid on 9 July 1846 and the church opened on 1 August 1849. Its most celebrated feature is a vast scheme of decorative murals, covering roughly 520 square metres of the chancel and nave, painted between 1896 and 1910 by the Douglas-based artist John Miller Nicholson at the instigation of the then vicar, Canon Savage. The church also holds a First World War memorial designed by Archibald Knox, unveiled on 11 November 1923 in Scotch green slate with gold lettering and listing 104 parishioners who died in the war; it was originally mounted on the exterior west wall and later moved into the Memorial Chapel in the north aisle. Other features include stained glass windows, a three-manual organ, and a bell and clock tower.
St Trinian's
Ruined medieval chapel at Greeba in the parish of Marown. St Trinian's stands in an arable field below the central hills. An antiquarian description placed it among a group of Manx chapels larger and more substantially built than the small keeills. Its windows terminate in simple Gothic arches formed from two long stones springing towards one another. The chapel acquired one of the best-known Buggane stories on the Island. Tradition held that every attempt to roof St Trinian's was frustrated by a Buggane which tore the roof off during the night. In one telling, the creature complained that the sound of the church bells would disturb him and decided to amuse himself by tossing the roof away. The story remained sufficiently current in the eighteenth century for Philip Moore, then curate of Marown, to try to disprove it. He masqueraded one night in the ruins to frighten local people and demonstrate the absurdity of their belief in the Buggane. According to David Craine, the performance got him into Bishop Wilson's bad books and did little to alter local opinion. St Trinian's also appears in older lists of ecclesiastical baronies. The abbot or holder associated with St Trinian's was among those owing fealty within the Lordship of Mann, alongside the abbots of Rushen, Furness, Bangor and Sabal.
St Trinian's Church (Keeill Brisht)
St Trinian's is a roofless ruined chapel at the foot of Greeba Mountain in the parish of Marown, with the current structure dating to the 14th century on a site with earlier Christian origins. It is the setting of a well-known Manx folk tale in which a Buggane (a shapeshifting ogre) tore the roof off the church every time it was completed, until a tailor named Timothy (Clucas) won a wager by finishing a pair of breeches inside the church overnight and escaped the enraged Buggane by reaching consecrated ground at Marown Church. Known in Manx as 'Keeill Brisht' (broken church), its roof has never been replaced; historians note that construction actually halted around 1343 amid the English conquest of the island. The ruin is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument managed by Manx National Heritage.