This week, Peter Kelly and David Callister take a look at Murray House – described, in Peter’s words, as the ‘badly proportioned Planning Office’
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Kelly's Eye : Murray's House
(upbeat music) - Kelly's Eye, brought to you by Ellis Brown Arcades. - Peter, what's Kelly's Eye, looking at today? - Today David, I suppose I'm looking at two Kelly's eyes. - Are you looking at those circular windows at the top of these rather tall columns? - That's right. - Well done. We've got a building with two lots of pediments on the front, which are all in plastic or fiberglass. And within the pediment, that's a triangular bit at the top. There's a circular window, which has neither rhyme, nor reason in reality. You wouldn't get that in a classical building. You'd get a carving crest or something. The columns which support all this lot are fluted and... - Are the same size that the top was out the bottom? - I was gonna say they don't appear to be tapered, well spotted. The capitals at the top are very much sort of just done out of the building. - And they're white marble, I suppose. - They're white fiberglass, and I'm sure somewhere somebody's tried to set fire to them as a bit where you can see inside sort of a foam. And they're on a rather large building and it's all very badly proportioned. And it's the planning office. - Why is it badly proportioned? - Well, window sizes, notice that in fact, first, second, third floor, all the same size of window, ground floor are longer, but they're only longer because they've got these blank panels underneath. But the proportion of the capitals and the columns is not right. It's been an attempt to give an old look to a modern building and... - It hasn't come off yet, I say. - It hasn't come off, and as you can see now, some of these columns on the way up are going in and out. There's been a bit of movement on them and lots of staining coming out of them. - True. - But the building itself, and although it is a government building now, I think initially it wasn't built for government, was it? I think it was perhaps built for some other purpose. - Yeah, it was the site of numbers five to 11, if I remember, Mount Havilloc, which were all purchased. In fact, the government owned one and sold it. And I think the planning office were in that one at one point in time. Anyway, it was sold, it was demolished, and then speculative development. Plans were submitted by Lovell Leusanne, there's a name that's been and gone, approved, building put up, and then by the time it was complete, 'cause it was being sort of let as a shell, government decided it would take it. I don't know if it bought it subsequently, but anyway, they then applied. It was in 1989 when they started work on it, and in 1991, government applied for permission from themselves to fit it out. I have an idea there was a problem at one point because the foundations had never been inspected by Douglas Corporation. There was some rather critical point came to light, but anyway, somehow or other, they got over that. - There often is. - And anyway, then, let's say, the government have occupied possibly own it. There was a number of departments in here, if you remember, was-- - Yes. - Adaptation? - Adapt on ground floor, first floor was education. Then doggy, and I think they were on two floors, but now I think they occupy pretty well most of the building, so it shows how the department has grown. - It's called Murray House, so who was Murray, do we know? - Well, the name Murray House existed previously, if we sort of turn to the left where there's now blue porter cabins and things stacked up as a builder's yard in front of government office. Next to the general registry was a cement-rendered building like a double-fronted boarding house, which government occupied, and if you can really remember that far back, the harbor board, this was running all the harbors from here in the middle of Douglas, the harbor board on the ground floor, and local government board and both of them, the drawing office and their rent office and all the work was squeezed into this building. So in fact, when it was taken over, I understand some sort of ballot or something took place. I remember the late Mike Savage saying that had been decided by those who worked in here to emulate the other Murray House, and so the name Murray came forward. Murray's themselves, originally, of course, were the Duke of Athens family, and I presume-- - Taking from that? - It's taken from that. I remember once being standing here with the civic trust assessor. And with the then planning officer commenting on the building and the then planning officer said, "But of course, it wasn't a government building. "We didn't design it to which I responded, "but who approved it?" (laughing) Well, would the front of this building and these tall columns look better if they were at the end of, say, 300 yards of lawns and gardens? Oh, probably, undoubtedly, but again, you wouldn't have two together. You'd have a central feature, you wouldn't have two lots. And basically what you got here, you see, are the concrete staircases, which you can readily see through the windows, or you can when the lights are on, and on the basis that before, it was going to be a speculative development, letting off floors at a time, then obviously, two lots of staircases were necessary. Many of the most iconic buildings around the island have been designed by Ellis Brown Architects. Keep up with Ellis Brown today on Facebook or by EllisBrown.im (upbeat music)