Douglas Inns
Introduction
For details of references cited and historical background see
Introduction. {NM] refers to Neil
Mathieson's papers which form the basis of much of this list.Since
Mathieson's time another source of information has emerged - the
Castle Rushen papers in Manx Museum have been sorted and amongst them
are the annual list of applications (and approvals) for Public House
licences (though not all years appear to have survived). The
1789 list is
available
According to Train (suspect quoting Jefferrys
of 1808), Douglas streets were not even named until 1809, certainly
they were not numbered until late1843 when the Post Office started to
deliver mail instead of requiring people to collect it.
Most of the Inns are on North Quay or in a street very close to
it. The figure is a rather simplistic representation of the North
Quay area - West to the top, the house numbers increase as you move
down from the Castletown Road and bridge to the Parade (the red
rectangle is the Old British Hotel) - (for those with the CD-ROM
version the index page gives access to
a 25" plan of the area). The Market place was between Old
St Matthews and the Quay
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Several major slum clearances have totally demolished old
Douglas - the first was in 1875 when Victoria Street was cut
through from Prospect Hill to the new Victoria Landing Pier,
the next was 1895/6 when much of the area around Old St
Mathews (Market Place, Chapel Row etc) was demolished,
including Old St Mathews itself. A new town hall and street
(Ridgeway St) was also created. In the 1930's came the
wholesale slum clearance of the area to the east of the
Market Place. Likewise with the building of the King Edward
VIII Pier (on the foundations of the 1796 Red
Pier) and the subsequent filling in of part of the
harbour much of the rest of North Quay has been altered.
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Hannah Bullock writing in 1816 says;
The lodging-houses are very numerous in
this town, but there are few inns, and only two of any
pretensions; in these the accommodations are good, and the
difference between their charges and those made at English hotels
is so great, that it induces many persons to give a preference to
Douglas, for a temporary visit during the summer,...
The tourist trade started to
grow from the mid 1820's, encouraged by the IoMSteam Packet Co.
from the 1830's.
The various pages give the various Hotels, Inns and Taverns
arranged by name - many changed names with changes of Landlord - the
major source of information has been the various trade
directories - an 1856 Act established licensing courts and
reports of proceeding in this court were carried by the press,
subsequent acts extended the powers of these courts.
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