REP Comment 1 Friends of Onchan Heritage Redacted
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From: To: DEFA, Planning Cc: [email protected] Subject: PA 22/00877/B Date: 07 August 2022 15:55:36
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The Friends of Onchan’s Heritage c/o 4, Falkland Drive, Onchan. IM3 1EF Special Interest Group
To The Secretary , Planning Committee, DEFA, Murray House, Mount Havelock , Douglas.
PA 22/00877/B Erection of single storey flat roof extension, Replacement windows, rendering and removal of both chimney stacks, 15, Central Drive, Onchan.
Following the Second World War there was a general shortage of building materials. Softwood was hard to obtain having been used in the war effort. Hardwood was more readily available but obvious a lot more expensive. Builders on the Island had to have a licence from the LGB for each building job they undertook and also there were permits required for certain building materials to be purchased and used. Most buildings erected in those post-war years had solid concrete ground floors because of the shortage of soft wood for joists and boarding. In the more select dwellings hardwood parquet block flooring was permitted on top of the structural concrete floor. On the Island the Glanfaba Brickworks at Peel were unable to provide enough bricks due to a shortage of shale at their quarry on the other side of the Neb and a shortage of men following the war. In 1946 Manx Bricks Limited was registered as a company and set up at Milntown ,Ramsey on the opposite side of the road to the mansion house. There was a delay in getting steelwork for the frames of the buildings and indeed the machinery. This was to be an entirely different method of producing bricks . Instead of heating clay in kilns and then waiting a week for the kiln to cool down after the process before removing the bricks ,these bricks were to be made from a mixture of sand and lime (obtained locally) and formed using high pressure steam. The bricks were ready for use the next day. Production commenced in December 1947 and by 1953 they were producing 8 million bricks per year. They were used a lot in local authority and Local Government Board Housing. Ballachrink, Onchan, Janet’s Corner ,Castletown, School Hill Castletown, Bromet Grove , Crosby, Clagh Vane, Ballasalla and elsewhere. Today these dwellings have either been rendered over or demolished and replaced by new dwellings. The sand lime bricks produced at Milntown differed from those produced by N R Corlett Ltd many decades later in so much that they were produced in three grades: and engineering type brick for work below the surface of the ground, a facing brick and a common brick. In Onchan ,in addition to the local authority housing they were used in private house building in Kerrocoar Drive and Central Drive. All were built in the facing brick. In Kerrocoar Drive there were three detached properties built by A M Grimshaw Ltd. One has since been rendered over, another has had the bricks painted and now only one remains as built. In Central Drive there was a large detached house on the corner with Howstrake Drive which was spar dashed a couple of
years ago and then a pair of houses of which the applicant property forms one of the pair.
Unlike the other houses that have had their sand lime bricks covered over this house is semidetached and therefore the unity of wall finish of the pair will be lost as a result of the proposals. Those living in semi-detached houses or bungalows have to have regard to the fact that they were built to be a matching pair and ‘read’ together. A wish to impose a personal ‘look’ to a property reflects in a detrimental way to the other half which remains as intended.
We OBJECT therefore to that element of this application that relates to the rendering over of the front elevation on the grounds that it would result in the destruction of the unison of finish of a pair of houses to the detriment of the adjoining property.
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Conservation Officer The Friends of Onchan’s Heritage.
