Did you know the Manx people have always been great travellers? One such place they travelled to was the Transvaal. The South African Republic often referred to as the Transvaal, was an independent country in Southern Africa from 1852 until 1902, lying north east within South Africa and just north of the Vaal River. The […]

Manx National Heritage Library & Archives hold the archive of a small family business called Teare and Sons, Sail Makers and Ship Chandlers. The business was established in 1866 by John Teare (a rope maker) and his son William Edward Teare (a sail maker) – interesting fact – William Teare was the brother-in-law of folklorist […]

Thanks to the work of Andree Dubbeldam of the Wildflowers of Mann and volunteer Joyce Quilliam, Manx National Heritage has over a thousand herbarium records on iMuseum, many of which include photographs captured by Andree and Joyce. The photographs show an historic herbarium (a collection of preserved plant specimens) collected from around the Isle of Man. […]

Manx National Heritage, the national heritage agency for the Isle of Man, wants you to discover what made the Island’s news in days gone by with the re-launch of the iMuseum Newspapers & Publications website, www.imuseum.im/newspapers/. Image: Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGreggor, reading Holiday News, June 1961 (ref: PG/13633/1/1961/195/1) Hundreds of subscribers both on Island […]

Want some help navigating the new site? Here’s our step-by-step guide to login: 1. Click the ‘Login’ button on the homepage: 2. You will be directed to Government Online Services. Please enter your username and password and click Login: 3. Click the link in the box ‘iMuseum Newspapers and Publications’: 4. You’ll then be directed […]

A project to investigate prehistoric “round mounds” on the Isle of Man began this autumn, led by Dr Rachel Crellin at Leicester University and Dr Chris Fowler at Newcastle University.  The mounds were built over human burial sites and are found throughout the British Isles and in Continental Europe.   First appearing in the Neolithic, round […]

From December 2016 people can browse through references for over 550 dissertations, theses, essays and academic reports with Manx subject matter, available for study in the Reading Room at the Manx Museum. Topics chosen for undergraduate, postgraduate and post-doctoral work are far ranging and include studies within marine biology, archaeology, politics, geography, history, musicology, Manx […]

In defiance of winter, This Is Summer sees the release of 1,000 new images onto iMuseum which we’re sure you can tell us more about.  From the thousands of Manx Press Pictures photographic negatives held by Manx National Heritage, one thousand have been selected and digitised from the 1960s to 1970s.  Together they give a […]

Project Archivist Eleanor Williams worked on an exciting project with the Manx manuscript archives. Here Eleanor tells us more: I have been researching, writing and promoting top level archive descriptions to Manx National Heritage’s iMuseum  and Archives Hub – a website which brings together descriptions of thousands of the United Kingdom’s (and now the Isle […]

Stunning black and white images of Isle of Man people and places, taken by Manx-born photographer Chris Killip between 1970 and 1973, have been added to iMuseum. Our hugely popular exhibition ‘Chris Killip’s Isle of Man Revisited’ recently closed at the Manx Museum – the evocative images featured are now available to view online. PG/14734 Chris Killip © Kent Rodzwicz Here’s what […]

From the miniscule to the massive, we’ve got it all in our new Cabinet of Curiosities at the Manx Museum. Have a peek at a puffer fish, or measure your hand against that of a Manx giant. See an electric shock machine or compare a tiny sugar sculpture to an oversized humbug. Chosen by our […]

Generations of visitors to the Manx Museum have enjoyed the Giant Deer Skeleton. In fact the skeleton is a significant and very complete example that has not been conserved since it was put on display over one hundred years ago. In 2015, as part of refurbishment work encompassing the deer display, the skeleton was removed for […]

What was a typical day for a First World War Internee on the Isle of Man? The recently digitised – and for the first-time complete translation into English – of the German First World War Internment Camp Newspapers onto iMuseum offer a rare insight into what life was really like at Knockaloe Camp (on the outskirts of Peel) for internees of the Great War over a century ago. But back to this question of what was a typical day in the life of an internee. I got to thinking about this when I chanced on this small, illustrated article from Lager Ulk, 18 November 1917. From daybreak to sunset here’s how one internee, W. Heinen, thought to describe (and draw) ‘A Day In The Life of a P.O.W’.

Cap worn by Illiam Dhone (William Christian) This kind of cap would have been worn in the evening at home, and was probably very comfy.  It isn’t the same cap as depicted in the famous portrait of Illiam Dhone (1954-6561) but it is of the same age.  It is made from fine linen and is […]

I’ve just returned from a lovely reminiscence afternoon at a Douglas care home with one of our memory boxes on the theme of ‘Entertainment and Leisure’. The box is full of fabulous artefacts and archives from our collections – including a selection of playbills and leaflets from the Palace Ballroom and Derby Castle in the […]

The stone crosses that can be found in many of the parish churches across the Isle of Man provide us with some of the earliest depictions of people.  These fantastic artworks were recorded in pen and ink by the first Director of the Manx Museum, PMC Kermode, in the early 1900s.  This drawing is of […]

First World War Internees inside an Internment Hut, Douglas or Knockaloe Camp, Isle of Man (© Manx National Heritage PG/7870/41784) The addition of over 12,000 First World War Internee records onto iMuseum was particularly significant to me, having spent an extended period collating, checking and adding to the existing database. Unfortunately, many of the records […]

The Victorians were not only the inventors of photography but the first to experience it.  Over 70 years they used it to define themselves and their world, the first in a long line of generations to do so.  The Manx National Heritage Library & Archives Photographic Archive contains some of the earliest known photographs of […]

© Manx National Heritage (1959-0317) Archibald Knox, Art Nouveau artist and designer for Liberty & Co., London (1864-1933) iMuseum gives online access to our entire Archibald Knox collection.  Funds, including an Island of Culture 2014 grant, has enabled Manx National Heritage to commission the best and latest in digital photography, capturing high-quality digital masters and easy-to-access […]

© Manx National Heritage (PG/13633) I received a very interesting letter recently which tells an interesting story about this photograph from the Manx Press Pictures archive.  The car to the foreground is Tony Pond’s famous Manx Trophy Rally winning Triumph TR7 V8  from 1978. In May 1979, Mylchreest Motors held a Motor Fair at Summerland, […]

Manx National Heritage has worked closely with the Public Catalogue Foundation’s Digitisation Services in recent years, encouraging greater public access to the National Art Collection. At the Manx Museum we care for a rich and varied collection of art, but we don’t have the space to display the collection in its entirety – only a small […]

© Manx National Heritage (PG/8224/18/40) The Lahmers family story: Jacob and John Lahmers were a couple of Bavarian musicians that came to the Isle of Man in the 1800s, they were both married to Manxwomen and their families were born and brought up on the Isle of Man. Unfortunately when WW1 broke out the by […]

Manx Newspapers are available online from 1792 to 1960 and can be used by family historians to find out more detail about the lives of your ancestors. Details of births, marriages and deaths may be found that give more information than in the parish registers of the time, such as addresses and names of other […]

The letters of the Quayle family of Bridge House, Castletown fascinate archivist Wendy Thirkettle (Manx National Heritage Library and Archives) who is coordinating a project to release descriptions to iMuseum.  Wendy is concentrating on correspondence written during the lifetime of George Quayle (1757-1835), owner of the historic vessel Peggy. Information about George can be gained […]

We’ve recently commemorated the centenary of the First World War, revealing through service records, photographs, objects and real life stories the Island lives caught up in the turbulence of war. Men and women across the Island served their country from 1914-1918. One such individual was Second Lieutenant Robert ‘Roy’ Corlett from Douglas. Manx National Heritage […]