life
ISLAND HISTORY
Photo left:
Shanklin Train
Station.
Bottom:
Traditional
drinking trough.
effort in the 1940s. One of only three
remaining in the country, the crane is a
symbol of the Island’s marine engineering
past.
In terms of scale, Hasely Manor at
Arreton boasts one of the smallest
listings, a modest brick mounting
block. The house is of course listed in
its own right but the mounting block
was considered sufficiently important
to be recorded separately. Standing in
the courtyard, it doesn’t need much
imagination to visualise the gentry setting
out for a day’s riding and tripping up the
steps to mount some fine horse that would
be in keeping with their status.
Even smaller are seven milestones in
Chale, Newchurch, Shalfleet, Shorwell
and at Mersley Farm but the prize for
the smallest listed item of all goes to the
bullring at Brading.
There are a scattering of monuments,
some prestigious, others surprisingly
modest. The Hoy Monument on St
Catherine’s Down, more accurately the
Alexandrian Pillar, was commissioned by
Mr Michael Hoy who made his fortune
trading in Russia, bought the Hermitage
at Chale and erected the column in 1814
to commemorate the visit to England
52
of Tsar Alexander 1st. Perversely it also
bears a plaque added forty years later, to
the British soldiers who fought against
the Russians at Inkerman and Sebastopol
erected by the then owner William Dawes.
Two tragic monuments to children, one
in Church Litten at Newport and one on
the Down above Freshwater Bay remind
us of the frailty of life. Little Valentine
Gray, aged only ten and apprenticed to a
sweep was beaten to death, his battered
body found in Scarrots Lane in 1822.
Edward Lewis Miller an adored only
son fell from the cliff when exploring in
1846. Valentine’s memorial was paid for
by public subscription while Edward’s
grieving parents erected an obelisk
bearing the warning: “thou knowest not
what the day may bring forth.”
A miscellaneous collection of items
includes gates, walls, railings, sheds and
stables. A row of pigsties at Godshill, an
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