The Butt / Church Road
Church Road is always referred to by Onchan people as The Butt. The name derives from the barrels, or butts, which were located there to store water before the days of a sanitised mains supply. This area around the church is the oldest part of Onchan and was the nucleus of the original village. The view looking down the slope, with the church in the background, has been the subject of many paintings and picture postcards.
Molly Carrooin's cottage, the quaint little whitewashed dwelling on the left, is possibly the oldest building in the village and probably dates back to around the 1740s. It was referred to as The Loom House in old title deeds and appears to have been a weaving shed. Originally, there was no chimney stack but by about the 1860s a stack had been added, and, still with a thatched roofed, it was then used as a residence.
Around the 1900s the roof was slated and it was occupied by Molly Carrooin and her sister. These two ladies attended to the village's laundry and carried on this occupation until the 1930s when the cottage had become unfit for habitation. It was acquired by the Skillicorn family and in 1969 was donated to the village to be preserved as a typical Manx style cottage. It is now cared for by the Friends of Onchan's Heritage and is opened to visitors during the Summer months.
The building next door but one to Molly's cottage looks like a little chapel but was in fact built as the parish Infants' School in 1842. Although it is now known as Welch House, it is not the work of John Welch who was the architect of the new church in 1833. The Infants' School was probably designed by John Webbe who was also responsible for the vicarage. In 1845 work began on erecting a new Parochial School opposite on the site now occupied as a garage.
At the bottom corner of the wall of the church yard stands an ornamental street light known as the Jubilee Lamp. This is a survivor of six such lamps provided by the Village Commissioners to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. Onchan has the distinction of being the first on the Island to have had electric street lighting the power for which was supplied by the generators of the nearby Isle of Man Tramways and Electric Power Co., the forerunner of the Manx Electric Railway.
Built into the wall surrounding the churchyard, opposite to the gates of the vicarage on the left of the road, is a stone pillar which is known locally as the "whipping post". However, its origin is more likely to be that it formed part of a semi-circle of similar stones associated with a pre-historic burial site.
Author of this Article: Isleofman Dot Com Ltd