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| .: Knockaloe Camp |
 Knockaloe Camp was set up in the Isle of Man in 1914 to house British citizens who were judged to mentally unstable to join the army and fight in World War I.
The site, in the West of the Island, was chosen because it was hidden away in a deep valley between two high hills which were covered in dense forests. The huts to contain the prisoners were built on a flat piece of cleared land, and the camp was given its own railway station.
No track was laid to the station, however, and no trains ever ran there but the internees were told the next locomotive would arrive soon and they were encouraged to wait on the platform where they were more docile and manageable.
The camp was a test site for many psychoactive drugs which were given to prisoners to judge their efficacy. It wasn’t unusual, as one Peel police report put it at the time, to see internees ‘talking to flowers, barking like dogs and attempting to flee from satanic pebbles’.
The Manx government was initially reluctant to set up the camp, but was given huge amounts of money from the UK government as part of the deal. This was used to set up many facilities in the camp to make it appear like a normal town, although as the disturbed inmates were allowed to design it whilst under the influence of mind-altering substances, it bore little resemblance to any sort of town that’s been seen before or since.
In the picture is Henry the Hat, a popular and well-known inmate who set up the camp’s Post Office. He was instrumental in the postal service which allowed inmates to send internal mail to each other – the government would not, however, allow them to send or receive mail from outside the camp.
Henry the Hat was known for his inability to judge size or perspective and often wore huge oversized flat caps. When he set up the first postal service, he was asked to design stamps and came up with a series of A4 sized postage stamps.
These can be seen clearly in the photograph and would have been illegal under Manx law because they weren’t sticky on the back, had no portrait of the Queen, and often contained tiny, printed swear words.
Today, Henry the Hat’s stamps sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction, and in 1998 Sotheby’s announced one had broken the world record when his original design for the ‘Mona’s bastard Isle’ stamp sold for £8.2 million.
After the war, the camp was closed down and the Manx government found itself in charge of hundreds of mentally ill and incapable people who had nowhere to go. In response, the Isle of Man set up a new town in Upper Foxdale and housed most of the population of Knockaloe there. Many of those still live in Foxdale to this day.Labels: Foxdale, Henry the Hat, isle of man, knockaloe, manx, Peel, word war I
Written at 14:58 by
G
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| .: The Isle of Man Phynnodderee |
 The photo on the left is the only documented shot of the Phynnodderee, a tortured spirit which roams the highlands of the Isle of Man.
It was taken in 1926 by Gideon Whitfullington-Phorcast, a housemaster at King William’s College, as he was shooting pheasants on Snaefell. He later told the Mona’s Gazette newspaper: “It was a hell of a beast, hairy and shaggy – looked a bit French if you ask me. It took one look at Lucy, my gun, and turned tail. Damned coward, what? I barely managed to get a shot off at the blighter.”
But it was that one shot that is said to have sealed Whitfullington-Phorcast’s doom. The Phynnodderee doesn’t like people who take pot-shots at him, and the teacher vanished one day whilst out rambling. He was never seen again and was said to have been taken by the Phynnodderee.
The legend surrounding the beast is an interesting one. It’s said that an Elven knight fell in love with a woman from Peel who’d given her virtue to him a little bit too easily.
Like most of the women in the Sunset City, she proved something of a nag, and was continually complaining that he was out til all hours carousing and drinking and debauching with the other faeries.
After they’d been in love for some months, it was time for the Rehollys vooar yn ouyr, the annual royal high harvest festival which was marked by a huge faerie feast at Glen Rushen.
But his Manx fishwife refused to let him go and made him stay in their house at Peel to put up shelves, change fuses and other such petty tasks. But this was his downfall – his absence offended the Elfin King, who cursed him and banished him from the faerie kingdom forever.
Now, he lives on, undying, doomed to wander the Manx mountains as a strange, sad, solitary wanderer. He is said to be something between a man and a beast, covered with black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes. Many stories are related by the Manx peasantry of his prodigious strength and his never-ending quest for the hidden gates to the faerie kingdom.
Still more stories are told about English fools who arrive in the Isle of Man to hunt the Phynnodderee and the hidden treasure of the dowry he never had the chance to pay for his wife. Seeking out the Phynnodderee, it’s said, is like asking the Devil to turn Hell’s heating up.Labels: faerie, fairy, Gideon Whitfullington-Phorcast, isle of man, isle of man manx, king william's college, legends, Mona’s Gazette, Peel, Phynnodderee, snaefell
Written at 13:49 by
G
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