Mum recorded that her parents, her mother Winifred especially, liked to take holidays in hotels, something that few families in the 1930s could afford. Mum’s own memoir, written in 1992, recalled a holiday in Pensarn, in North Wales, not long after her brother Tony was born (in September 1932). Holidays to the Isle of Man followed, almost certainly in 1933 or 1934. Mum’s own account of this is quite vivid:
“The next holiday I can remember clearly was to the Isle of Man where we met some people who were to figure in our lives for quite a few years to come. We boarded the Ben McRee [sic] at the Landing Stage in Liverpool. The journey out was quite calm and we arrived in Douglas in fine shape. We only had hand luggage including my Mothers hat box (in black patent leather) as no lady would be seen without wearing a hat – even bathing hats were worn to go into the sea.
We boarded the toast-rack railway which would take us from Douglas to Port Erin where we were to stop for a fortnight in a boarding house (I have forgotten the name) on the cliff road overlooking the sea. I think that this establishment called itself a Private Hotel and, if I remember rightly, had a dinner licence (a drink could be ordered with the meal). The lady who ran the dining room was built on very ample proportions and, as she beat the gong, no-one dare be late for a meal. At breakfast, she walked up and down the dining room shouting “Porridge or Prunes”. The washing arrangements in boarding houses in the early thirties consisted of the maids bringing up jugs of hot water to be poured into a matching bowl. Toilets were few and far between and during the night people used ‘potties’ or ‘gazunters’ as they were later called – these were emptied by the chamber-maids each morning – a nasty business which faded away after the ‘maids’ joined the forces during the Second World War – and had no intention of returning to perform such revolting tasks. At the Boarding House we met a family, the Burtons, a Mother, Father (slightly older than my Mother and Father I always thought) and their son Michael who was about twelve to my sister’s ten and my eight. We thoroughly enjoyed their company and my parents planned more holidays with them but not to Port Erin.“
I visited the Isle of Man for the first time after Mum had died, and followed a similar route on the steam railway from Douglas Station to Port Erin – the only remaining part of a much larger heavy rail system on the Island. The “toast rack” railway was the tram from Douglas to Ramsey, and Mum must have recalled this from a later journey. The Ben my Chree had been built in 1927, and was in service until 1966; there is an exhibition about it in the Manx Museum.
One clue to the choice of the Isle of Man may lie with Ward Lock & Cos guide to The Isle of Man (1926-7 edition), which stated that “The prices charged for accommodation are very reasonable compared with those of most seaside resorts.”
There is a photograph of Mum, her sister Sheila, and little brother Tony, with her father, and the Burton family from Upholland, in Lancashire, on the shore at Port Erin. The shore and rocks are little changed, but most of the hotels/boarding houses on the front at Port Erin have now gone, and apartment blocks, some recent, have replaced them. Some aspects of the (now) preserved steam railway cannot have changed much since Mum’s visit, and I will write further about this.
Coming from a strongly Roman Catholic background, there would be no question but that any holiday would have to be in a place with a Catholic church. Port Erin had one, St Columba’s, which had been built in 1923, and would therefore appear “new” at the time. This could be reached along the road past the station and on the eastern outskirts of Port Erin on Castletown Road. The church is still there.
Mum’s account did not extend to the journey back (or indeed what they did in Port Erin, although judging by later holidays the pattern was simply to enjoy the area with the odd excursion). On the way back, however, a storm blew up, the Ben my Chree was tossed around in very windy conditions, and even most of the crew were seasick. Mum always claimed that she was one of the few who did not succumb to seasickness. Her mother practically gave up, despite having a baby to look after. As Mum recalled much later “I was left to wander on my own. I was leaning over the side and was pulled back by a family friend.” This was Michael Burton, whose father was looking after Tony.
Joan Boughey Recalled 