The Island (as it is idiomatically known) has a complex history. I can recall, when working in Rome, seeing a fresco-painting in the Gabinetto Segreto, Biblioteca Vaticana (or Apostolica), depicting Reginald (Ragnvald IV), King of Mona (Isle of Man) “in the Irish Sea”, in the presence of the Papal Legate, bestowing his Kingdom upon the Apostolic See during the Pontificate of Honorius III (r.1216-27). This King wished to hold his realm of the Papacy and King Henry III of England (r.1216-72), thus avoiding having to do homage to the Irish Church or to be subject to Irish episcopal domination, and so his realms were taken under Papal protection for an annual fee, a process called “surrender and regrant”, which assured legitimacy and recognition.

This rewarding book outlines the ways in which English, Irish, Scots, and Norse influences have impinged on the place, which is today internally self-governing. One of the most interesting survivals among the many remnants of decorated crosses is a fragment from the 10th century which shows Odin with one of his familiars, a raven, on his shoulder being eaten by the fearsome wolf, Fenrir, as the old pagan world ends and Christianity triumphs, while Christ, rising from the dead, tramples a serpent and carries a Cross and a Bible. A fish, symbol of Christ’s name, is also depicted elsewhere on the fragment, and an inscription in Norse runes tells us that Þorveldr raised the cross.

Many years ago I had a Manx holiday, staying at an extraordinary stucco-faced crenellated jokey confection called Fort Anne, set on an elevated position high above Douglas, which had originally been built for the Irish rake, Thomas Whaley (1766-1800). Whaley’s original house, “built at great expense”, had been considerably extended on both sides when the place became an hotel in the 1840s, but was demolished in 1979, and the site lay empty and derelict for many years (not unusual in Mona), until a new office-block was erected to designs by Ellis Brown which attempted to replicate something of the character of the lost building, with its crenellations and tourelles, but the regular fenestration gives the game away, and the replacement does not convince. Having a remarkable memory, I can recall a fellow-guest, a charming young woman from Darlington, and a fetching Dachshund called Seppi (who belonged to the manager, who was German), tearing excitedly along the very long corridors, but rather too much of what else of the Island resides in my mind has vanished or been wrecked. 

I found Mona fascinating, with its burial-sites of c.4000-2250 BC at Meayll, near Cregneash, and Cashtal yn Ard, Cornaa; its castles (Peel Castle and the ruined cathedral of St German on St Patrick’s Isle is very memorable, as is Castle Rushen, at Castletown);  its many small churches (all listed here, with some illustrated, including those at Ballaugh, Santan, and Braddan); and the marvellous Laxey Wheel, by Robert Casement, of 1854, designed  to pump water from the mines further up the valley. Kewley amusingly likens the last to a gigantic Sellotape dispenser, but a very handsome one. With my own interest in the architecture of death, I was delighted to stumble upon the Egyptianising Deemster Heywood mausoleum, with its stepped roof capped by a hefty sarcophagus, in Onchan, but the photograph in this book shows it now deplorably overgrown (Kewley gives it a putative date of 1855, which I reckon might be rather late).

In Douglas itself, apart from the horse-drawn trams, the long terraces of stucco-fronted boarding-houses from the second half of the 19th century were most striking, as was the former Bank of Mona (now Government Office), of 1854-5, designed by John Robinson, who was clearly highly competent, using an Italianate language of Classicism, ingeniously adapted for a tricky corner-site. Castletown, with its well-preserved mediæval castle, proved to be a rather intriguing place to explore, as were Ramsey, Peel, Port Erin, Port St Mary, and the places where collections of ancient sculpture may be studied, including Michael and Maughold.

However, those were impressions, albeit refreshed, dating back to the 1950s, but a subsequent visit induced considerable sadness and disquiet, for much had changed, and not for the better. Following an inflow of retired persons taking advantage of the Island as a tax haven from the late 1950s, the place has been disfigured by indefensibly ugly outbreaks of bungaloid growths, spreading like eczema over parts of what had been a relatively unspoiled landscape. Artificial stone or incongruous slate crazy-paving cladding, enormous picture-windows, and widespread replacement of traditional window-frames with pvc horrors, invariably white to draw attention to their hideousness, have done enormous damage to innumerable domestic buildings, and there have been orgies of destruction of the older (and most attractive) parts of Douglas, Ramsey, and Castletown from the mid-1960s, a grim time for the built environment almost everywhere in the Atlantic Archipelago. In short, the built environment of the Island has not been well served by planning authorities which have failed to protect it for future generations, and indeed seem to have acquiesced and even encouraged widespread destruction.

Mercifully, however, the Gaiety Theatre and Opera House in Douglas, a typically showy number by Frank Matcham (who knew a thing or two about how to provide places of entertainment freed from any kind of architectural puritanism or inhibition) of 1898, and containing functioning stage-machinery, was rescued from demolition in 1971, and there are other important survivals, such the Court House, Ramsey (1799), and Castle Mona, Douglas (1801-4), both by the Gælic-speaking George Steuart (could he have been the architect of my lost Fort Anne, now only a fading, painful memory?). The hugely amusing and very unserious Milntown, a stuccoed, castellated, turreted, Tudoresque house, remodelled after 1830, is merrily enjoyable, and mercifully free from the pvc window plague, while, almost miraculously, given the widespread devastation I saw all over the Island, the former Collinson’s Café, Spaldrick, Port Erin (1913), by Clement Williams & Sons, a whimsical pile-up of great wit and ingenuity, put together with verve and élan, is still there to enchant.

There were two buildings I discovered on my second visit which bowled me over, and which I had unaccountably missed in the 1950s, given their considerable size and presence: one is the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady Star of the Sea and St Maughold (1909-12), by Giles Gilbert Scott, in Dale Street, Ramsey. It has a powerful, massive, fortress-like tower at the west to which is joined the Presbytery (handled in a modest vernacular manner). But the church interior, with its overwhelmingly fine reredos filling the eastern wall, carved by G. Ratcliff, with triptych painted by Frances Burlison, is a masterpiece, and the Lady Chapel is also well worth a visit. High on the western wall of the nave is a Pietà of 1927, designed by Scott for the demolished church of St Anthony, Onchan, and carved by Ferdinand Stuflesser: it is a memorial to the Irish Nationalist leader, Michael Collins, assassinated 1922.

My second discovery was the church of St Ninian, Douglas (1910-13), by W.D. Caröe, who had been a pupil of J.L. Pearson (responsible for the slightly disappointing New Kirk Braddan, Braddan [1871-6]): not only is St Ninian’s a powerful composition in free Gothic, but it has some good Arts-&-Crafts work inside although the interior has been ruined by the partitioning off of the west end in c.2007 to provide meeting-rooms, etc., in line with the Church’s self-perceived rôle as a virtue-signalling extension of the Social Services. Nevertheless, stained glass by Horace Wilkinson of London in the chancel and chapels, probably one of his largest commissions (1913), can still be enjoyed: he was favoured by Caröe. There is also glass by Powell & Sons of 1918 of which Kewley approves, but he describes, with accuracy, the west window by Abbott & Co. of Lancaster (1983) as “seriously unsuccessful”, a verdict with which I would not quarrel. However, Kewley refers to some rather dull cruciform panels of coloured glass set in abstract patterns of 1939 by William Morris & Co. of Westminster in Jurby church as the “most striking … on the Island”. He then states that the stained glass featuring Sts Maughold and Nicholas, of 1988, by John Hayward, in St Olave’s church, North Ramsey, is “probably the best on the Island”. I beg to differ: Harry Clarke’s two windows of 1924 in St Mary’s R.C. church, Bowling Green Road, Castletown, are far finer and much more interesting than either the Morris or Hayward exemplars. 

There are several Arts-&-Crafts buildings on the Isle of Man, including Onchan parish-hall (1897-8), by M.H. Baillie Scott, a little masterpiece with influences from the work of C.F.A. Voysey, including the battered buttresses. Baillie Scott was also responsible for the single-storey police-station, Castletown, of 1900-1, with a conical-roofed corner-tower, tapered chimney-stack, and shaped gables, the whole of coursed local limestone. 

The wrapper of this volume features an extraordinary castellated structure (1832), built on rocks in the sea to designs by John Welch, intended as a refuge for drowning sailors following the wreck of SS St George. The book is, as usual with this series, handsomely produced, and for the most part judiciously illustrated (though there cannot be too many pictures in books about architecture), though I would question why space was wasted to show Britannia House, Douglas (1976), the bunker at Cregneash (1941), Ballafesson Estate housing (1950s), and Marine Gardens, Ramsey (1988).

And why, oh why, are books still being printed in China? We have plenty of competent printers in these islands crying out for work.