Seneschal Lane, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1932-34 (b/w photo)

On the back of this photograph John James Frowde writes, "Smagg's house getting near its end. The levelling of the many sand hummocks on which so many of these old houses had stood, proved a formidable job. This is a case in point. S. Barnabas' Square was another, and a worse, involving as it did a larger area. Where the coat hangs on L of the print was an excavation, which I only casually glanced at when I exposed this film: and I was , during ensuing needs, filming the demolition of the Sheffield Hotel & adjoining buildings. I little guessed what my absence from Smagg's area was going to mean. Below the excavation on the L of this print, the men struck a tunnel, some six feet broad & about seven feet high, with flagged floor. This progressed right through the cellar of 11 Seneschal Lane, (print 20), thence in front of Clague's No 3 S. Barnabas' Square' vaulted cellar & proceeded to the W. yard wall of St. B. Ch. under which it disappeared in company with another passage which finished under the cellar of Mother Pratt's first boarding house, evidently connecting by a trap door with the overhead cellar of Mother Pratt's in the Laxey Inn Yard at the E end of Duke Lane. This job went on from May to Sept 1934, excavating & filling in, and it was only early in January I heard of it from Mr J. T. Clague on the job. I got in touch with Mr Kelly the principal workman, through Mr Lindsay, who supplied me with all the information he could get & I have the whole matter written out. Kelly said that no photo was taken. Recently I found in mine of the Parade a string of people in the distance looking into the tunnel, & on another the two tunnels [sketch] close to S.Barnabas' Ch. Mr Neely had not heard of it, & after enquiries, he was told that the D.T.C. had not been informed that he was deputed by the Museum to supervise."