Banknotes

Falcon Cliff Lottery, ticket for £5, 12 September 1838, serial number I772, Wood signature, lightly toning, and minor foxing, overall very fine and extremely rare, a great item with an amazing story
IOMPM unlisted, Pick unlisted £300-£400

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Jonathan Callaway Collection of Isle of Man Banknotes.

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Collection

The Falcon Cliff public lottery was set up in 1838 to sell off part of the Castle Mona estate, located just north of Douglas. This belonged to the Duke of Atholl, the Lord of Man, and was broken up after his death in 1830.

The major prize winner in the lottery was “local bank manager” John Stanway Jackson (1797-1881) who was manager first of the Isle of Mann Commercial Bank and then, after that bank’s failure in 1848, the Bank of Mona. Indeed his signature appears on the notes of both banks. He is said to have bought lottery ticket no.1.

Jackson used some of the prize money to build the fine castellated mansion that carries the name Falcon Cliff and still stands today. He commissioned John Robinson, a local architect to design it but moved out in 1855 when the Bank of Mona’s building on Prospect Hill was completed. It later became a hotel but closed in 2012 and has since been converted to offices.

In 1887 a cliff railway was installed to give the hotel easier access to the sea front. This was dismantled in 1896 and a second one was installed in 1927. This operated until the hotel closed.

Jackson, it is said, was far luckier in lotteries than he was in banking. He did, it seems, combine his roles as a bank manager in the Isle of Man with a similar role first at the Stockport Banking Company from 1834 and then at the Manchester and Liverpool District Banking Company. He left the latter after a scandal in 1839 when the bank suffered heavy losses. In 1844 he gave evidence at a trial of a businessman who had successfully defrauded the Stockport bank of £5,000 when Jackson was the manager. More “misfortune”!

Jackson’s family came from Middlewich, Cheshire and moved to Heaton Mersey near Manchester in the 1820s. In the 1841 census he was still recorded as living there but put his Manchester home up for sale or rent in 1842. He then moved permanently to the Isle of Man and retired there in 1871. His affairs were complex even in death. It was not until 1895 that parts of his estate were sold and there were claims in court up to 1899 to settle debts owed on legacies.

In a final act of misfortune, his son Stewart Levett Jackson became a manager at the Bank of Mona like his father and was caught up in its collapse in 1878.