Demolition of the former police station in Willaston is well under way. It will be cleared in order to provide space for new housing. But for one family, it wasn’t merely a police station, it was a house and in fact was their home.

Retired policeman John Manley and his wife Gill contacted the Examiner just as clearing of trees around the house began and told our reporter Sam Turton how they’d ’lived above the shop’ for four years with their children Robert and Garry during the 1980s when John was stationed there.

Their daughter Kimberley was born after the family moved out of Willaston.

He said: ’We lived here as a family from 1983 to 1987 after which I moved into the traffic department based at police HQ so I was the last resident officer in the police station.

’There were officers based after me, but they operated out of Onchan police station.’

When John first joined the Constabulary in 1981, they were residents in Onchan at the police house, before John took up the full-time posting at Willaston.

Despite being based in Onchan, he actually served in Douglas at that time.

He said: ’All our children went to Willaston primary school.’

For Gill, it was the second time she had lived in the station. She was born there when her father was stationed in Willaston.

She said: ’My father Archie Corkill was a serving police officer and I was born at home.

’We lived there until I was eight when we moved to Port St Mary police station.

’At that time when a police officer moved, the whole family had to move. After that we went to Onchan.’

There were actually two separate living quarters in the building. Gill grew up in 18 and later moved into 18A after she and John were married.

She said going from one to the other, leaving in 1966 and returning in 1983 as well as having their own children there, was ’like going full circle’ for her.

Gill added: ’Growing up in a police station was no different to anywhere else, it’s just your family home. Apart from sometimes you would get people calling at the door with unusual things.

’It’s actually really good living in a police station as you’re right in the middle of the community. You’re at the bus stop, the church, the shops, the school, everything is central to the police station.’

John added: ’They talk about community policing, but in those days it truly was community policing in that we went to the same shop, our children went to the same schools, people came and knocked on our door or stopped us in the street or in the shop if they had a problem.

’Despite the modern approach, that was truly community policing. You never were off-duty.

’People would knock on the door any time of day or night and if I was out on patrol, they’d speak to Gill and she’d have to pass a message on.’

Gill added: ’Then the police would be out playing football on the field with the local kids and they became a friend to the kids but I don’t think it’s like that now.’

The couple said they are both ’very sad’ to see the building being demolished as they had many happy memories there.

John has been retired from the police for 10 years having spent time at Castletown police station as a control room sergeant in Douglas and finally spending his last two years in the Force as the last police officer to prosecute for the Chief Constable before that duty transferred to the Attorney General’s Office in 2007.

Even after that date, he was seconded to the AG’s office to continue in that role until he retired in November 2009.

John said the biggest transformation during his time in the police was the technology.

He explained: ’When I first joined, radios were very touch and go, there were many blackspots. We had no computers, so technology was the biggest advance in the time I served and since I retired.’