And so the walls that divided all the estates and changed Douglas, eventually disappeared but not without a certain amount of controversy.

The lands around Douglas were mainly farmlands and the sections that were the orignal farmlands were known as quarterlands.  Eventually when the town of Douglas started to spread, the lands were sold off as parcels of land by the different land owners which became the estates.   This resulted in boundary walls made of manx stone which varied in height to demarcate the newly formed estates.

There were no planning regulations and  certainly no controls, other than the designs of the building being of a certain height on the promenade, so there was a certain amount of freedom to develop.  Although the new developers did a tremendous job – they did not want to remove the boundary walls and there were no laws that forced them to do so. This resulted in residents sometimes having to make a detour to get to a road which was within spitting distance of their home, but blocked by the BOUNDARY WALL !!

There is a story that Henry Bloom Noble came to open the hospital and had travelled on the main road and turned in to Christian road only the be met by the BOUNDARY WALL.  He had to get his coach driver to manoeuvre the vehicle in a tight space, head back to the main road and take a turning that would allow him access to the Hospital, where there were no obstacles.  This resulted  slight delay in the official opening of Nobles Hospital.

With the development of the town and road infrastructure, these walls eventually came down and today there is still  evidence of these walls and can be seen  if you walk around the areas of upper Douglas  They appear and then suddenly disappear and are often incorporated into the walls of houses that were built later.   It is nice to see a little bit of that past still here as you wander around the streets of Douglas.