From St Barnabas Square into Fort Street, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1932 (b/w photo)

On the back of this photograph John James Frowde writes, "From St. Barnabas' Sq. Into Fort St. Door (with sign over) entrance to stairs to the old Assembly Rooms. The open door is at street end of a passage under the building, & leads to a cobbled courtyard containing a cottage. 1934 Bank Holiday week, August, I saw a card tacked over the cobbled passage leading to the cottage in the yard at the rear. On it I read 'Comfortable accommodation'. [see also] St. Barnabas' Square looking down into Fort St. Door on L. entry to the stair to the old Wellington Assembly Rooms. In times when this place was 'elderly', up to later than 1830, while the streets were still filthy & garbage strewn, an oil lamp here & there, fair ladies in silks etc. would step into sedan chairs, (then museum pieces 'across the water') in the early morning hours for their homes on the S. Quay, Woodhouse Terrace & other 'toney' parts of the small town - and none of them had ever seen a bathroom. No drainage or sanitation - no water supply except wells, or the water-carts supplied from the Big Well. And in mid-last century, Mr Archie Clarke of Jurby, 'a notable local preacher', grocer of King St., married the daughter of Mrs Shortridge of Bigwell St., a suburb then. So that is how my old schoolfellow Harry Clarke got his second name."