At the turn of the 20th century, the Isle of Man ran on holidaymakers. Steam packets from Liverpool disgorged thousands of mill workers and factory hands who had saved all year for a week of sea air, brass bands, and entertainment loud enough to drown out the memory of the loom. Douglas Head was one of the headline acts. Funicular railways, a camera obscura, a hotel, an electric tramway, and this small cliffside amphitheatre all crowded onto a single rocky point. The shows were unfussy and direct: minstrel troupes, pierrots in white cones and ruffs, song-and-dance routines built for audiences who wanted to laugh, sing along, and feel briefly extravagant. The number of concrete steps that survive hints at the size of the crowds, packed close enough that the cliff itself must have looked like a slope of hats.

The Second World War broke the spell. Several of the head's attractions shut in 1939 and never reopened, including the Douglas Southern Electric Tramway whose tracks ran along the road beside the stage. Post-war holidaymakers chose package flights to sunnier coasts, and Douglas Head's tangle of Victorian amusements faded into picnic spots and overgrown viewpoints. The amphitheatre stayed where it was, too solid to vanish and too odd to repurpose. Someone, every so often, brushed it down and gave the stage a fresh coat of paint, an act of quiet, hopeful maintenance with no booking sheet to justify it.

For decades the only organised event the amphitheatre saw was a 1993 show during the island's Year of Railways, marking the centenary of the Manx Electric Railway. Then in 2015 the Isle of Man Film Festival took a chance on the old stones. Their opening-night film was The Goonies, screened under the stars, with critic Mark Kermode in the audience. Picture it: a cult adventure about kids chasing buried treasure, projected onto a clifftop above the Irish Sea, played to people sitting on concrete the Victorians had poured for a different century's pleasures. The screening was judged a success, and organisers floated the idea of more summer films under the open sky.

Today the amphitheatre is a Victorian ghost that refuses to disappear completely. The seating still steps down the slope, the stage still squares the view of the sea, and the surrounding hill keeps its little graveyard of vanished attractions: a tramway arch, a funicular footing, a hotel-shaped clearing. Walk down from the lighthouse on a clear day and the whole structure feels like a stage waiting for a cue. Sit a while on the steps and you understand the appeal: the wind is steady, the light off the water is generous, and the sea provides a perfectly indifferent backstage.