The vault underneath the old Grammar School, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1932-34 (b/w photo)

On the back of this photograph John James Frowde writes, "Another view of the huge vault underneath the old Grammar School. There were two partitions therein, one brick, one stone, both discernible in the print. Being filmed in mid-winter, and raining at the time, the print might be worse." Additional notes: "The Rev Hugh Stowell Brown, eldest son of the Rev Robt Brown, Chaplain of S Matthews, and later vicar of Braddan was born in 1823 and left the old Chaplain's house in New Bond St in 1832 for Braddan Vicarage with the family. In his autobiography, published by his son-in-law, he writes:- "I should think that as Chaplain of St Matthew's, my Father's income was rather under than over £100 a year, on which sum he kept his mother, his wife, and before he left Douglas, five children: and then there were two servants. We lived in the Chaplain's house, situated ..... in New Bond St. The house was a long building, with vaulted cellars beneath, which were let to a grocer as a wine and spirit store; the rent formed part of my father's income. I have a rather indistinct recollection of the arrangements of the house, but they were not very comfortable. Some of our neighbours were very drunken, wretched people, of whose nightly brawls I have a very lively remembrance. ...... In front of the house was a low public, kept by a Mrs Foreman." The pub was the Step-down Inn. He makes no mention of his father as having been master of the school as well as Chaplain of St Matthew's. But when at Braddan, after the Cholera had subsided he was sent to the School which was held in the same building in which he had passed his first years."