We first went to the Milntown estate in May last year. We visited the spring-buoyant gardens, and indulged in tea and crumble.

Today we were back. Initially for breakfast with family (Milntown does a fine Benny), and then for a look round the house.

It has a fascinating story. From at least the 15th century, this was the ancestral home of the Christian family. The current house, however, dates from the 1750s (our third 18th-century house of the trip, after Hanbury Hall and Pickford's House).

According to the website: "In the 1750s Milntown was occupied by a tenant, as the main Christian family were living on their extensive estates in Cumberland. The tenant, a Ramsey man called John Llewellyn, requested permission to demolish the 'old ruined mansion', as he described it, and offered to build a new house." You have to ask whether this was normal behaviour on the part of a tenant, but anyway, what he built "was a simple, five-bay Georgian house similar to many Manx farmhouses that can still be seen around the Island today... The building formed the core of the present house which was greatly expanded in the late 1820s."

The reason for that expansion was Deemster John Christian. He was born in Castletown in 1776, but educated in England, where he intended to stay, as Manx society was "so much behindhand". However, in 1822, when he was offered the position of 2nd Deemster, he returned. At this point Milntown was still tenanted, so the Christians lived initially in Fort Anne, above Douglas harbour. But when they moved to Milntown in 1828, they started a major programme of expansion. Extra rooms were added, as were Gothic crenellations (these are very cool), and a new entrance driveway.

The house is lovely. Very elegant, with inspiring views from the many windows over the gardens and mountains beyond. It's also reputed to be haunted...








A number of famous people have connections with this family:

-- Perhaps the best-known of the Christians was William Christian (known locally as Illiam Dhone). Born in 1608, he worked for the Earl of Derby (then Lord of Man). When the earl went to England to fight for the king in the Civil War, Dhone surrendered the Island to the Parliamentary forces. The Derby family later had him executed as a traitor at Hango Hill on 2 January 1663. Quite how we should assess him is still the subject of some debate (there's lots more information here and here).


-- Fletcher Christian (of Bounty fame) is also from this family. He it was who led the mutiny against Captain William Bligh (1789). The mutineers eventually settled on Pitcairn Island, and their descendants, many of them called Christian, still live there today.

-- Augustus, the son of Sir William Hillary (founder of the RNLI), married Deemster John Christian's daughter, Susan, in 1828. Hillary would have regularly visited Milntown.

-- According to the information panels, the mental illness of Eliza Mellor, wife of Henry Christian (1810-59), became the inspiration for The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (whose Armadale I read recently).

*_*_*

The Deemster who did all the extensions died in 1858, and the story turns a bit darker at that point. The estate was divided between five children, and the son, William Bell Christian, borrowed money to buy his sisters out. He married four times, and had 12 children, but his last unfortunate wife, Vio, was left with massive debts when he died in 1886. Result: The liquidation of the estate, and the auctioning of the contents of the house. But Vio rented the estate back, and started a school. This closed when she left the Island after the First World War.

From 1927-48, Milntown was a hotel, and during the Second World War, it was a popular drinking place for service personnel stationed in the neighbourhood.

Charles Peel Yates (of Yates's Wine Lodge fame) bought the house in 1948, and lived in it until 1963. It was then bought by Lady Kathleen Edwards, a wealthy widow who moved to the Isle of Man to avoid taxes.


Her son, Sir Clive Edwards, also lived there, and inherited the property on her death. When he died, in 1999, he left the estate to the Manx public.


Unsurprisingly, the gardens are looking a little more subdued in these autumn days, but they're still very beautiful:







Altogether a very gracious, uplifting place. And they have apartments. Maybe we should stay there next time...