Historic estate in Lezayre, for centuries the principal Manx seat of the Christian family.

The Christians were established at Milntown by the early fifteenth century. A family account printed in the Manx Note Book begins with John McCristen, recorded as one of the Deemsters in 1408. By the seventeenth century the family had become one of the most prominent on the Island. James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, remarked in 1643 that there were many Christians in Mann and that they had "made themselves chief here."

Milntown was not simply a residence. Deemsters commonly held courts in their own houses, and in 1661 Ewan Curghey, Coroner of Ayre, ordered William Sayle to appear before Deemster John Christian at Milntown. Sayle failed to attend and was fined twelve pence.

The estate was closely connected with several leading figures in seventeenth-century Manx politics. William Christian, Illiam Dhone, was a younger son of Deemster Ewan Christian of Milntown. Another member of the family, Edward Christian, served as Lieutenant-Governor before falling into conflict with James Stanley.

The family also possessed the small freehold Barony of the Hough in Maughold, containing about 420 acres. It had formerly belonged to the Priory of St Bees in Cumberland but later passed to the Christians of Milntown. The number of customary tenants was too small to form a Setting Quest, most of the barony consisting of demesne land held directly by its lord.

By the later eighteenth century the family had also become established at Ewanrigg in Cumberland. John Christian of Ewanrigg and Milntown, born in 1756, married Margaret Taubman in Maughold church in 1776. After her death he married Isabella Curwen in 1782, took the surname Curwen, and later sat both in the House of Commons and the Manx House of Keys.

A later Deemster John Christian of Milntown protested to Sir Walter Scott over the depiction of Edward Christian in Peveril of the Peak. Scott replied that his Edward Christian was "a mere creature of the imagination."