Modern gun battery.
A gun battery was first constructed on Douglas Head in early 1797, as part of a wider response to the threat posed by foreign privateers to the Island's coastline and its shipping.
By the 1860s, a series of batteries providing interlocking fields of fire from one end of Douglas Bay to the other was no longer necessary, and a single emplacement was constructed to protect the harbourmouth.
The new battery stood slightly to the east of the 1815-1821 barbette, and its earthwork parapet is shown on the Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1867-8. The battery is variously described as being armed with two or four guns, and its timber construction to resemble the deck of a warship. An undated photograph in the Manx National Heritage collections (pg/7888/58) shows part of the battery with three cannon present.
The battery was soon rendered obsolete by advances in naval gunnery, and from 1870 the local gunners received their training in Liverpool.
The site of a 19th century hotel on Douglas Head, which incorporates the original lighthouse tower (PRN 3775.10) on the headland. The building is now used as an apartment complex.
About 1816 the British Government erected a seamark tower (PRN 3775.10) on Douglas Head, which still stands but is now incorporated into a former hotel at SC387746 . There was no light provided until 1832-33 when the Isle of Man Harbour Commissioners erected a tower 104ft above high watermark at SC390747. This was visible for fifteen miles, or from the top of Blackpool tower. Responsibility for the light was transferred to the Commissioners of Northern Lights, on 1 August 1859. They rebuilt this lighthouse in 1892. As usual with their shore-based lights, there was adjoining keepers houses, now privately owned, while the light itself is now automatic.
A former sea mark tower which has been incorprated into the Douglas Hotel complex. It was built by the British Government as a seamark tower circa 1816, later replaced by a lighhouse (PRN 3775.00).
69 names listed alphabetically; Battle of Trafalgar. Rectangular stone with anchor-shaped stone alongside. Inscriptions in gold on front and rear face of stone. Gold anchor emblem on front face. Three legs of man emblem on rear face.
The memorial was unveiled on 29 June 2006 by the Lord Bishop of Sodor and Mann; Quilliam Chaplain and Douglas Port Chaplain. The memorial commemorates the Manxmen who served in the British fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. It was sponsored by corporate donation and the cost of the memorial was £12,000 - £15,000.
The memorial consists of a sports field and a plaque. No names listed; Second World War. Metal plaque affixed to a stone pillar, on the right-hand side of the entrance to the football pitch.
The Douglas Hotel on North Quay traces its origins to 1759, when the Ulster merchant Robert Black leased a 64-foot quayside frontage from the Duke of Atholl and built a residence on the plot, which was later used by the 4th Duke of Atholl as his Island residence. The building appears in late nineteenth-century Douglas trade directories as a hotel, reflecting North Quay's long history as a merchants' and shipping quarter of the town.
Press gangs operated in Douglas, seizing Manx men for the Royal Navy. The Island that had lost its merchant fleet to Crown seizure now lost its men to Crown impressment. The fishermen and sailors who had worked the Irish Sea routes were taken for service in wars that had nothing to do with them.
An 18th century bridge in Douglas. It carried a path across the enclosed tidal "lake" from the Castletown Road to the heart of old Douglas at the western end of the inner harbour, and is thought to have resembled the surviving Crossag bridge at Ballasalla in form. The crossing predates 1820, when Captain John Washington criticised the enclosure of the "lake" by the then owner of the Nunnery estate. Traces of the bridge's abutments survived until around 1999, when they were removed during harbour works to install a water-retention scheme.
1a Howard Street, Douglas, IM1 2EQ, near the junction with Victoria Street. A small white plaque reading "OLD SEA WALL" mounted on an exposed run of natural rock face set into the modern street wall, next to a shopfront. The rock strata are the original shoreline geology, left exposed and marked rather than built over when the street was developed on reclaimed land.
Douglas Railway Station is a somewhat rambling structure (as is required by its function) and is constructed of red brick with pitched slate roofs and a major glass roofed 'lean-to' entrance corridor. The profile of the brickwork has been adapted to approximate to the platform roofing requirements in a decorative fashion. Similarly the accommodation areas of the station have received some definition with brick pilasters and string courses of geometrical rather than structural significance. Because the building is sited in a hollow, there is an imposing gateway and clock in a detached structure located to be visible along Athol Street. This structure with its twin cupolas and central arch is well resolved but only related to the main station by a rather small scale brick and iron paling fence to the gate enclosing the station yard.
Douglas railway station, at the landward end of the harbour at Bank Hill, is the terminus of the Isle of Man Railway and was once the hub for lines that also ran to Peel, Ramsey and Foxdale before those closed. It opened on 1 July 1873; the present main station building was designed in 1888 but not built until 1891-92, and the iron-and-glass canopy across its front was added in 1909, with further rebuilding in 1901, 1991 and 2016. An ornamental gateway at the Peel Road/Athol Street corner, with twin gilt-topped turrets and a clock tower, forms part of the historic station complex, which was registered as a protected building of the Isle of Man in 1984.
