Letter from Major Joseph J Durbin (Mount Murray) to James McCrone requesting assistance in securing the Duke of Atholl's patronage for a subscription to build a schoolhouse for poor children at Foxdale lead mines. The letter dates to 1825, well after the 1765 Revestment, but provides contextual information about Atholl family charitable interests and land-holding patterns on the Isle of Man during their post-Revestment period.
Major John Taubman of the Nunnery, Speaker of the House of Keys.
The Nunnery came to the family in his time. Peter John Heywood, one of the Deemsters of the Island, conveyed the Nunnery estate near Douglas in 1777 to John Taubman of Castletown, Esquire, and it stayed in the family long afterwards. The Manx Society's lists of the 1860s still give J. S. Goldie Taubman of the Nunnery, by then Speaker of the House of Keys in his turn.
His rank came from the Island's own forces. He walks through the records of Tynwald as Major Taubman, sword-bearer, placed in the procession after the two Deemsters and immediately before the Duke of Atholl, ahead of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Clerk of the Rolls and the twenty-four Keys. In the war years he and the Lieutenant-Governor pressed the Home Office to have the commission for the Fencibles dated from 24 August 1798, and in March 1796 he added another hundred pounds to the Island's contribution to the war.
He went into banking. In 1802 he joined George Quayle, Quayle's brother Mark Hildesley Quayle, and James Kelly in opening the Isle of Mann Bank at Castletown.
He was Speaker when the House lost its home. On 16 October 1817 the members inspected their own building, resolved unanimously that it was not only unfit but imminently unsafe for holding their meetings, and adjourned forthwith to the George Inn in Castletown. The further resolution appointing a deputation to find them a place of meeting was signed by him as Speaker.
This large slab was discovered in use as a lintel above a window in the old church in 1772. It bears a cross carved in low relief on one face and inscriptions on the other. The decorated side shows a shafted cross with limbs connected by a ring. Both the shaft and circle have a cable border ending at the foot in the head and tail of a serpent. In the centre of the cross is a circle of ring-chain, while each limb contains two interlinked rings bound by a diamond-shaped ring, and ends in four linked triquetras. The shaft is decorated with panels containing plaits of nine and seven strands. To the left of the shaft are a hart and hound, and a robed priest with arms raised, supported by a staff. On the right side are the worn remains of what may possibly be another hart and hound. Below them a seated man plays a harp to the right of whom another figure carries what appears to be a drinking horn. Below the harpist is another priest with uplifted arms, again holding a staff. The ogham alphabet is incised vertically in the space below the cross shaft. The other face bears a long runic inscription to the right which has been translated as, 'Mael Lomchon raised this cross to the memory of Malmura his foster mother, daughter of Dugald the wife whom Athisl had.' A second inscription to the left reads, 'Better is it to leave a good foster-son than a bad son.' A third inscription, in ogham, placed centrally near the top of the slab, is only lightly scored and is not decipherable.
See also Manx Cross 130.
This large slab was discovered in use as a lintel above a window in the old church in 1772. It bears a cross carved in low relief on one face and inscriptions on the other.
The decorated side shows a shafted cross with limbs connected by a ring. Both the shaft and circle have a cable border ending at the foot in the head and tail of a serpent. In the centre of the cross is a circle of ring-chain, while each limb contains two interlinked rings bound by a diamond-shaped ring, and ends in four linked triquetras. The shaft is decorated with panels containing plaits of nine and seven strands.
To the left of the shaft are a hart and hound, and a robed priest with arms raised, supported by a staff. On the right side are the worn remains of what may possibly be another hart and hound. Below them a seated man plays a harp to the right of whom another figure carries what appears to be a drinking horn. Below the harpist is another priest with uplifted arms, again holding a staff. The ogham alphabet is incised vertically in the space below the cross shaft.
The other face bears a long runic inscription to the right which has been translated as, 'Mael Lomchon raised this cross to the memory of Malmura his foster mother, daughter of Dugald the wife whom Athisl had.' A second inscription to the left reads, 'Better is it to leave a good foster-son than a bad son.' A third inscription, in ogham, placed centrally near the top of the slab, is only lightly scored and is not decipherable.
English political economist whose dictionary of trade carried an early published account of Manx smuggling.
His Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce of 1755 included an article on smuggling in relation to the Isle of Man. It opened by stating that the Island was, and had been for many years, a common storehouse for all manner of goods and merchandise which paid high duties in Great Britain or Ireland, or were prohibited into those kingdoms. The passage is one of the reactions to the running trade that later Manx compilers cite for the state of things in 1755, a decade before the Revestment. The Journal of the Manx Museum indexes him separately on the commerce of Douglas.
He wrote a great deal else. Britain's Commercial Interest Explained and Improved appeared in 1757, and Great Britain's True System argued that increasing public debts and taxes would in a few years ruin the monied, trading and landed interests alike.
Fragment of a cross slab at Malew Church. Malew Church holds several recovered Manx cross slabs (including the well-known Sigurd/Fafnir slab, Manx Cross 120, of a different catalogue number to this fragment), reflecting the church's long use as a burial and monument site. No further published detail specific to this fragment (Manx Cross 207) has been located, and its features should not be assumed to match those of the other, distinct crosses held at the same church.
Malew Church, about a mile and a half north of Castletown, was the parish church serving the town when Castletown was the Island's ancient capital, and the parish is first referenced in the Chronicle of Man in connection with a battle in 1250. A description from around 1648 calls it 'a handsome church with a spire steeple', and a 1651 sketch by Daniel King shows an earlier roofless building with high gables and a western bell turret. The present church comprises a nave, transept and chancel with a bell turret, a stained-glass east window, a Norman font, and pre-Reformation chalice, paten and crucifix, along with numerous monumental tablets. Its large churchyard, sometimes called 'the Westminster Abbey of the Isle of Man', holds memorials to notable Manx figures including William Christian ('Illiam Dhone').
Two Viking-type swords were found in the course of grave-digging in the churchyard during the 19th century. No further detail is known about the circumstances of their discovery, location, nor of their fate, though one or more burials may be implied.
A number of parish churchyards on the Isle of Man have produced Viking weapons, implying that ‘pagan’ burials (usually characterised as graves accompanied by grave-goods) have taken place in Christian contexts. The discovery of several similar graves, during the archaeological excavation of the otherwise Christian cemetery in Peel Castle / St Patrick’s Isle in the 1980s, shows that this interpretation of the earlier isolated finds is valid.
Wooden-framed Roll of Honour featuring image of Jesus and a fallen soldier between the lists of 90 names. Seating in area enabling people to sit and remember those men named next to the memorial window. First World War.
43 names listed; First World War. 1939-1945. 14 names listed; Second World War. Celtic cross obelisk, surmounted on three circular tiers.
The memorial was unveiled on Wednesday 18 July 1923 by the Lieutenant Governor Sir W. Fry. It was dedicated by the Vicar of Malew. The memorial was designed by P.M.C. Kermode. It was carved from limestone by Mr W. Kissack, of Scarlett, assisted by Mr C.H. Cubbon, stone mason, of Castletown.
